The Visual Arts of Linda Vallejo: Indigenous Spirituality, Indigenist Sensibility, and Emplacement
C/LS Journal 15(1)
Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS)
Arizona State University, Chicana/Latina Studies
Fall 2015
Linda Vallejo’s work was featured in the Fall 2015 issue of Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (Women Active in Letters and Social Change) as well as an artist statement titled Chicana Indigena as a Creative Path. Vallejo’s contributions were accompanied by an essay written by Karen Mary Davalos, Chair and Professor, Loyola Marymount University Chicano/a Studies Department, entitled The Visual Arts of Linda Vallejo: Indigenous Spirituality, Indigenist Sensibility, and Emplacement. The Journal is published twice a year with the generous support of the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Science and the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies at Arizona State University.
Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, biannual flagship publication of MALCS. This feminist Chicana/Latina and Indigenous academic organization is dedicated to building bridges between community and university settings, transforming higher education, and promoting new paradigms and methods.
The Journal publishes groundbreaking interdisciplinary scholarship creative works by and about Chicanas/Latinas and Indigenous women of the Americas and is receptive to all scholarly methods and theoretical perspectives that examine, describe, analyze, or interpret our experiences. English and/or Spanish submissions of scholarship, commentary, reviews, and creative writing are accepted.
Excerpt
The Visual Arts of Linda Vallejo: Indigenous Spirituality, Indigenist Sensibility, and Emplacement
Karen Mary Davalos
Born in Los Angeles and raised by three generations of Mexican- heritage women, Linda Vallejo creates an oeuvre that is easy to understand as feminist and indigenist. Ancestral women, including three great-grandmothers, grandmothers, her mother, and several great aunts, were the artist’s first sources of feminist and indigenous knowledge. Vallejo describes one great-grandmother as “una indígena” because she was short, had dark skin, and wore trenzas and huaraches; she was also very strong, even fierce, having worked in the fields as she migrated north (Vallejo 2013).1 The appellation indicates the way in which Vallejo understands knowledge and subjectivity as emerging from material conditions, social forces, and affect, rather than biology.
Vallejo is also a world traveler. Because of her father’s military service, she visited “all the major museums of Europe, many of them as a very young girl” (Vallejo 2013). This exposure at an early age to European art, not reproductions, influenced her artistic process. While attending a boarding school in Madrid, Vallejo traveled throughout Spain and to Portugal, Italy, and France to study Western history, mythology, and ancient civilizations. She was enthralled by the technical and compositional revelations that become available when witnessing art in person. Her approach to learning was soon predicated on a personal encounter with art.
Full essay
Chicana Indígena as a Creative Path
Artist Statement, Linda Vallejo
My formative years were spent in far-flung locations throughout the United States and Europe. During my artistic grounding, I became increasingly immersed in the Chicano/Latino/Mexican-American arts and the indigenous communities—experiences that have informed my cultural perspectives and, by extension, my art practice.
At one point in my creative process I found myself ruminating, “What would repurposed images look like if created from my personal Mexican-American, Chicano lens?” I began appropriating and repurposing antique photographs and figurines to deconstruct iconic international culture images to create a world that included my cultural perspective.
Artist Statement C/LS MALCS Website Karen Mary Davalos essay