Previous Courses Offered For Cultural Production in Chicana/x/o Studies
WINTER 2024
CHST 124: Xicana/o(x) Art Praxis: Politics and Methods of Community Based Work
This course introduced students to specific Chicana[x] & Latinx, Indigenous/Native, Asian, and Black and Afro-Latinx American artists, art history and cultural practices developed as an essential aesthetic of art made by artists of color in the US. Focus is placed on the ideas and methods for working in community that are still viable and integral to current art practice with a commitment to social justice. The course is intended for those who are interested in working in community in non-traditional and/or already established public and community spaces and programs. The course offered training and skill building through actual hands-on experience. Students learned to conceptualize, write and develop lesson plans based on the concepts of spiritual resistance, social justice, and the cultural relevancy of spiritual and political activism. Guest artists this winter included Jesus Macarena Avila, visual artist located in Chicago, IL, whose work engages community, and Ramona Garcia, visual artist and maker of traditional “muñecas de papel mache” (paper mache dolls.)
WINTER 2024
ChSt 596: Graduate Art Studio/Seminar
The intention of this graduate studio/seminar was to engage the strategies used by Xicana[x] artists to articulate a sense of place, meaning, history, cultural continuity, and community building through the arts.
This past winter quarter Las Maestras Center and the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies worked together to bring Indigenous Salvadorean, Guatemalan queer artist Dalila Paola Mendez, currently based in Los Angeles, as Las Maestras Center artist-in-residence. They utilized the Independent Studies Graduate Studio/Seminar to support the proposal of three graduate students from the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies interested in painting a mural. Cynthia de la Rosa, Alejandra Pulido Mejia, and Diana Sanchez worked under the guidance of Dalila, in the conception, planning, design and painting of two mural panels 5ft x 7ft, that were specifically intended to commemorate and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the department’s doctoral program. As LMC’s artist in residence for the Winter 2024 quarter Dalila also worked with Maestra Celia to mentor two other Chicanx Studies graduate students: John Jairo Valencia, and Karla Gomez Pelayo, both working on independent visual art projects. They were also able to provide (culturally specific) critique for Diego Melgoza Oseguera’s MFA exhibition.
Of special note is that they collaborated with the Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art’s new programs director Dalia Garcia in planning and organizing a museum talk by photographer Janna Ireland about her exhibition “True Story Index,” for Indigenous youth from Santa Maria. Following Janna’s talk, Dalila gave a creative writing and drawing workshop for the youth, UCSB students, and the general public. The most exciting aspect of this event was to have the art work’s purpose and intention discussed in 3 languages, Mixtec, Spanish, and English. Dalila also presented on her work These collaborations were funded by the California Arts Council Artist Grant and the Luis Leal Chair.