5th Chicana/o Biennial
curated by Joey Reyes
Movimiento de Arte y Cultural Latino Americano (MACLA)
San Jose, CA
December 5, 2014-March 15, 2015
In its 25 years MACLA has showcased the work of emerging and established Latino artists in the Bay Area, United States and beyond. The Chicana/o Biennial is MACLA’s most visible and popular juried exhibition that takes inventory of the critical edge and aesthetic interventions within contemporary Chicano art.
Over the last fifty years the field of Chicana/o art and scholarship has developed and expanded exponentially. As an art movement that developed alongside the Chicano civil rights struggles of 1960s and 1970s, Chicano art emerged in direct correlation to social change. Today, there are more points of view and more artists (of Chicano and other/mixed backgrounds) contributing to this significant sphere of contemporary art, many of which are re-defining what it means to create contemporary “Chicana/o art”.
As with previous biennials, MACLA’s 5th Biennial presents artists of different generations and backgrounds working in a wide variety of media including video, installation, painting, printmaking, and mural-making. Notably, many artists from the rich cultural and artistic worlds of San Antonio, TX, Los Angeles, CA, and the Bay Area, are represented. Finally, the featured artists respond to the questions and concerns of the contemporary art world including: 1) what are the pressing concerns at this moment in time? (politics) 2) what does Chicana/o art look like today? (aesthetics) 3) How do artists engage the community? (activism & organizing)
Artists included: Juana Alicia Araiza, Carmen Argote, Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, Adriana Garcia, Wayne Healy, Ester Hernandez, Judithe Hernandez, Miguel ‘Bounce’ Perez, Tony de los Reyes, Celia Herrera Rodriguez, Sonia Romero, Alex Rubio, Ana Serrano, Shizu Saidamando, Patssi Valdez, and Linda Vallejo.
Chicana/o Biennial Explores what it means to be a Chicano or Chicana Artist: The art of older and younger Chicano artists brings generations together, MetroActive, by Nick Veronin, San Jose, CA, December 3, 2014
Exhibition invitation MACLA website