In Your Face: Arte Chicana Dopo
In Your Face: Chicano Art After C.A.R.A.
Sala Dalí del Instituto Cervantes de Roma
Rome, Italy
September 28, 2022—January 21, 2023
Fifty-four works by 28 artists from the AltaMed Art Collection in collaboration with the Embassy of Mexico in Italy and the Instituto Cervantes in Rome to feature sculptures, photographs, prints, paintings and mixed media
Curated by Susana Smith Bautista, Director and Chief Curator, Rafael Barrientos Martinez, Curator, and Shirley Villalobos, Art Collections Assistant, AltaMed Art Collection
Electric Oaks on the Hillside, 2008, oil on canvas, 60 x 84 in.
Thirty years after CARA, a traveling exhibit of Chicano/a artists toured the United States, In Your Face endeavors to introduce Chicano art to new audiences in Italy through important partnerships with the Embajada de México in Italy and the Instituto Cervantes. It starts where CARA ended in 1985, and continues through the present-day, although on a smaller scale. The exhibit includes artwork by the same artists who were included in the original CARA exhibition.
The exhibition demonstrates how these artists have continued to create artwork that is just as vibrant and powerful, boldly addressing the same themes from CARA that remain an integral part of their personal and artistic lives.
These themes are socio-political as related to Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Latinos living and working in the United States; they focus on identity, feminism, and civil rights, referencing American, Chicano, and Mexican cultures and traditions, with a mostly figurative style that evokes strong, emotional personalities and histories. The exhibit aims to improve appreciation of Chicano art as part of the greater canon of art history, and inclusion in American art conversations. The exhibition contributes to building and sustaining cultural bridges between Los Angeles and Rome, between the United States, Mexico, and Spain, and between artists of Mexican heritage and the rich artistic communities in Italy.
For the opening of the exhibition, there will be a panel discussion including two of the artists in the exhibition (Linda Vallejo and John Valadez) together with the AltaMed Chief Curator and the President/CEO. The event will be translated in Italian. At the end of November, we have invited another exhibiting artist – Harry Gamboa Jr – to create an artistic performance that would be site specific, focused on the Piazza Navona and the famous Bernini fountain of the four rivers. Gamboa Jr. will also engage with the local arts community to give a lecture or masterclass/workshop.
About CARA
The exhibition title In Your Face is taken from the 1990 exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA) that started in Los Angeles and traveled to ten museums in the United States, Mexico (Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City), and Spain (Museo de América, Madrid) for three years. Organized by the University of California Los Angeles Wight Art Gallery, CARA was a groundbreaking exhibition that included 180 Chicano/a artists and arts collectives from the period of 1965 to 1985. It was the first time that a Chicano art exhibition received major press coverage, and the first to be included in mainstream museums at a national and international level. The exhibition focused on the Chicano Movement of that historic twenty-year period, on the socio-political conditions of Mexicans, cultural politics, feminism, civil rights, and on Chicano culture.
First ever Chicano art exhibit in Italy opens in Piazza Navona, Italian Insider, by Grace Stathatos, October 12, 2022
In Your Face: Arte chicana dopo C.A.R.A
Radio Colonna Tv
Published on September 29, 2022
Press release The American University of Rome announcement