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4. The Chicana/o Mural Environment: Indigenist Aesthetics and Urban Spaces
- University of Texas Press
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Chicana/o Murals and Social Spaces As I stipulated in the introduction to this volume, Indigenist imagery in muralism was meant to function as a metaphorical and tangible platform where Chicana/o artists could carve out spaces for the articulation of cultural citizenship and decolonizing creative expressions. The space, site, and location of a mural were as critical to its production as its style, iconography , and subject matter. These elements are so important that Chicana artist Judy Baca once stated that when preparing to make a new mural, she alwayscarefullysurveysthespacewheretheworkofartwillreside.Shetakes into consideration the space’s topography, spirit, and people before she ever putsupscaffolding.1Knowledgeaboutthephysicalandmetaphysicalpower contained within a particular space, Baca argues, leads to the creation of a mural that has a more organic and sensitive relationship to its environment. Nevertheless, murals must not only reflect the energy of their location; they must also have the power to positively transform it. Psychologist Robert Sommer, whose thoughts on the psychological effects of murals were elicited by the editorial board of Community Murals Magazine in 1982, also underscored the importance of site for murals: The community muralist knows in advance where the work will go and who will see it. Before the work is started, the artist is obliged to study the site, talk with the residents about their concerns in general, and about the artwork in particular. The community artist is obliged to undertake this research on site and audience.2 The visionary ideals that Chicana/o muralists like Baca and observers like Sommer held about the ways in which murals reflected and transformed the spaces around them were often counteracted by the politics involved in the creationofpublicart.Communitymuralpaintingconstitutedanartistic practice that required a complex negotiation with city officials or other potentialpatronsforthepublicspaceinwhichitwaslocated .Insomeinstances, C H A P T E R F O U R The Chicana/o Mural Environment Indigenist Aesthetics and Urban Spaces T H E C H I C A N A / O M U R A L E N V I R O N M E N T 141 the successful procurement of the space for the mural signified for the artists and their communities an empowering victory over the marginalizing politics of federal urban initiatives. In other instances, securing said spaces required artists to reach a certain degree of compromise with their political and social consciousness. In either case, however, Chicana/o artists were underscoring the profound importance of the site for the creation of a mural, thus acknowledging that, as Erika Suderburg stipulates, “‘site’ in and of itself is part of the experience of the work of art.”3 The site specificity of murals implied that the space was a critical component of the artwork to the degree that the mural would be incomplete without it. The practice of mural making for many Chicana/o artists was deeply dependent on their understanding of space as a social construct. In other words, the Chicana/o experience of marginalization and displacement proved to them that urban space was never neutral or devoid of meaning and, furthermore, that it was a result of a complex history of labor and social production. These attitudes toward space in many ways reflected Henri Lefebvre’s definition of social space: They [social spaces] are products of an activity which involves the economic and technical realms but which extends well beyond them, for these are also political products, and strategic spaces. . . . The state and each of its constituent institutions call for spaces—but spaces which they can then organize according to their specific requirements. . . . Thus this means of production, produced as such, cannot be separated either from the productive forces, including technology and knowledge , or from the social division of labor which shapes it, or from the state and the superstructures of society.4 While murals reclaimed physical spaces on behalf of the Chicana/o community , Indigenism asserted metaphorical spaces for said population. The Indigenist aesthetic that many California muralists generated was indeed the symbolic counterpart to the more concrete claims for public space that their work required. The images of indigenous America being deployed in these wall paintings operated as visual signifiers for the mythical homeland of Aztlán. Indeed, Chicana/o cultural producers as a whole were conscious thatAztlán,asRafaelPérez-Torresexplained,made“claimstoapoliticaland economicself-determinationnotdissimilartoclaimsassertedbyindigenous populations throughout the world.”5 After identifying the entire U.S. Southwest as a possible location for this Aztec homeland, Chicana/o artists and intellectuals sought tangible ways through which to lay claim to U.S...