V.1.2 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 781458
THIS EXHIBITION’S TITLE, “Hispanic American Art in Chicago,” must seem spurious to those readers who would subscribe to [historian] Dr. Rodolfo Acuña’s opinion that the term “Hispanic(s)” is a label “sewn” by Chicano bureaucrats to create the social and economic illusion that they constitute/have a national homogeneous constituency of Spanish-speaking Americans.1 Thus perceived, the label becomes little more than an arbitrary and artificial tag. The umbrella under which twenty artists are exhibiting at Chicago State University would appear to be on the verge of collapse under a wind of doubt, and charges of possible misrepresentation. And, yet, how more succinct a label could one invoke in bringing together the creative energies of six Mexicans, five Chicanos, five Cubans, three Puerto Ricans and one Venezuelan, all of whom work in Chicago? One response might well be to have done with a label altogether. But, that point of view overlooks completely the need which an exhibit such as this very one fulfills.
This writer conceived and organized this event because he felt and continues to feel that there is an urgent need to address, and even confront, those Chicago critics of the visual arts whose articles appear in the city’s dailies and whose views influence public opinion, despite the lamentable fact that all too often they choose to disregard the nature of the work executed by this same city’s minority artists, excluding them altogether from their discussions.
Those artists whose heritage is not white ethnic, or to be more specific, Anglo, are no longer satisfied with token citations issued when, for reasons of political expedience, the press chooses to placate them, acknowledging, for example, a few barrio murals. These artists want to be recognized as a part of the “mainstream,” albeit a unique part. Murals, notwithstanding their unparalleled significance as communal public art, are, after all, only one medium of expression. Jose Aguirre, Maria Enriquez de Allen, John Asencio, Carlos Cortez, Renato Esquivel, Edmond Fernandez, Luciano Franchi de Alfaro III, Emma Yolanda Galvan, Eladio Gonzalez, Jose Gamaliel Gonzalez, Oscar Martinez, Francisco Mendoza, Marcos Raya, Elizabeth Rivera, Richard Michael Rivera, Arnaldo Roche, Alejandro Romero, Gloria de los Santos, Paul Sierra and Inca Zabala are all individual artists whose work must be appreciated in the international context of contemporary art with its many and divergent streams. Twenty varied styles and iconographies reflected and conveyed in several media beg the critic’s objective scrutiny. The artist’s cultural/ethnic heritage is merely one piece of information amidst so many pieces from which the critic can select. Certainly, no artist represented here should elicit from any critic the argument that the artist’s ethnicity is being used as a crutch to advance an allegedly “deficient” art.
The political connotation that the label of ethnicity carries can move the critic not unlike a bee drawn to honey. Ethnic identity/labeling is, therefore, a stage that minority artists accept and overcome in the process of attaining artistic recognition. Their ultimate expectation, however, is earned recognition irrespective of ethnic designation; the recognition due an artist whose work speaks for itself. Professor Acuña, himself, contends that: “labels are important since they condition our future.”2
Beyond the promotion of dialogue with art critics, two other principal reasons motivated this writer to help realize the exhibition. Firstly, the landmark traveling exhibition of 1979, Ancient Roots/New Visions, when mounted at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, was unable to showcase as many of Chicago’s “Hispanic American” artists as its guest curator, Jose G. Gonzalez, considered equitable. It is hoped that the present show will contribute toward greater representation of those talents. Secondly, and of paramount significance, is the often unstated truth that “Hispanic American” artists are themselves misinformed about their own art and artists. Hispanic American Art in Chicago examines, then, some of the “Myths” and “Truths” surrounding itself.
From the outset one’s experience in viewing this show of over fifty pieces is at one and the same time visual and extra-visual. Questions of terminology, apparent contradictions between ideology and practice, and a pervasive process this writer chooses to call the “politicization of culture” (a process which does not of necessity or design hinge on the artist’s overt rendition of political subject matter) are key extra-visual considerations. Their role becomes evident upon a review of the works on exhibit and their authors’ statements.
1
Rodolfo F. Acuña, “Return to the Spanish Boy,” Somos (June 1979): 20.
2
Ibid., 21. The contemporary movement for women’s rights affords one interesting and parallel frame of reference.