Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this document, art historian and professor Margarita Nieto discusses the 1989 exhibition, Los Angeles Latino Artists, in which fifteen Los Angeles-based Latino artists reflect on the experience of the city in their production. She suggests that [...]

This is a very brief statement by Chicana visual artist Patssi Valdez. In it, she discusses the ways in which the content and appearance of her art has changed since her working as an artist got started. She emphasizes the autobiographical quality of [...]

“A True Barrio” by Edy (Eddie Ytuarte) is part essay, part interview. Edy introduces the essay with a brief review of the work by Harry Gamboa, Gronk, and Willie Herrón exhibited at Mechicano Art Gallery in East Los Angeles in 1972. The author [...]

Building upon scholar and cultural critic Tomás Ybarra-Frausto’s theorization of rasquachismo as a set of aesthetic practices that adopt an oppositional stance to dominant culture and articulate a Chicano identity, Amalia Mesa-Bains—a cultural [...]

In this essay, Harry Gamboa, Jr. profiles the Chicano artist collective, ASCO, to which he belonged. He highlights Walking Mural (1972) as the performance that first introduced the group to the Chicano community. He describes how ASCO followed this [...]

In this essay, author and artist Harry Gamboa, Jr. presents a series of episodes recalling the public performances in Los Angeles of the collective, ASCO. The text also highlights memories of violence and suffering in the writer’s neighborhood [...]