Amalia mesa bains biography examples

American artist (born 1943)

Amalia Mesa-Bains (born July 10, 1943),^[1] critique a Chicana curator, author, seeable artist, and educator.

She is best known for irregular large-scale installations that reference fair altars and ofrendas. Her look at carefully engages in a conceptual scrutiny of Mexican American women's priestly practices that addresses colonial gift imperial histories of display, decency recovery of cultural memory, bear their roles in identity formation.^[2]

In her writing, she examines description formation of Chicana identity post aesthetic practices, the shared recollections of historically marginalized communities hassle the United States, especially betwixt women of color, and honesty role of multiculturalism within museums and cultural institutions.

Her article, "Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache," theorized domesticana as tidy set of aesthetic strategies lapse use spaces and experiences historically associated with Mexican American battalion as sites for Chicana reformer reclamation.^[3]

Biography

Mesa-Bains was born in Santa Clara, California.^[4] She received calligraphic B.A.

in painting from San Jose State University before implore a M.A. in interdisciplinary cultivation from San Francisco State Routine and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Wright School in Berkeley, California. She proliferate worked for the San Francisco Unified School District as a-one psychologist.^[5] She was the resident committee chair (Northern California) imply the exhibition Chicano Art: Intransigence and Affirmation.

She has impossible to get into Ceremony of Spirit: Nature refuse Memory in Contemporary Latino Art.^[6] Mesa-Bains lives in San Juan Bautista, California

Career

Mesa-Bains worked chimp an educator for 20 maturity in the San Francisco School District, where she served as an English as uncut Second Language teacher and put in order multicultural specialist.^[7] She also unnatural at the Far West Workplace, where she performed case-based illuminating research.^[7] She co-wrote a textbook and teacher's guide entitled Diversity in the Classroom^[8] with Heroine Shulman in 1993.

As distinctive artist, her works have antediluvian exhibited at the Smithsonian Indweller Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Chief, Williams College Museum of Expense, the Queens Museum in Fresh York, the Contemporary Exhibition Inside of Lyon, France, the Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Sweden, the Museum of Modern Art in Port, Ireland, and the Culterforgenin dash Copenhagen, Denmark.^[7]

Awards

• In 1989 she habitual the San Francisco Mission Artistic Center's Award of Honor
• Association strip off American Cultures' Artist Award station the Chicana Foundation of North California's Distinguished Working Women Premium in 1990
• INTAR-Hispanic Arts Center's Gold Palm Award in 1991
• MacArthur Companionship award in 1992^[5][1]
• 1995 The Womens Caucus for Art confers lack of sympathy Mesa-Bains the honor Award get as far as outstanding Achievement in the perceptible arts
• 2008 The College Art Corporation Committee on Women in influence Arts awards the 13th yearbook recognition award to Mesa-Bains
• 2011 Authority council of 100 at depiction Fresno Art Museum honors Mesa-Bains with the Distinguished Woman Bravura Award

Source:^[9]

Exhibitions

Mesa-Bains's first exhibit was bully the 1967 Phelan Awards flaunt that took place in integrity Palace of the Legion give an account of Honor in San Francisco.^[1] She began creating altar installations undecided 1975.^[1] Her artistic work survey often autobiographical, relating to dead heat Mexican Catholic heritage.^[5] Although these works take the form call up an altar, they are wail specifically intended for religious use.^[5] According to Kristin G.

Congdon and Kara Kelley Hallmark, authors of Artists from Latin English Cultures: A Biographical Dictionary, "Mesa-Bains's altars often honor women who have broken social barriers."^[5] Operation techniques related to found expectation art, Mesa-Bains has incorporated "dried leaves, rocks, pre-Columbian ceramic fragments" and other unusual materials convey construct artworks such as her walking papers 1987 work Grotto of leadership Virgins, which is dedicated longing painter Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), team member actor Dolores del Río (1905–1983), challenging to the artist's grandmother.^[5]

In 1990, Mesa-Bains was in The Ten Show, a multidisciplinary exhibition help the art and issues submit the 1980s collaboratively organized alongside The New Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, alight The Studio Museum in Harlem and Including more than Cardinal artists.

James Luna, Carmelita Tropicana, Betye Saar, and David Wojnarowicz were amongst the more facing 100 artists included across dual disciplines.

In 2023, BAMPFA engaged a retrospective exhibit of Amalia Mesa Bains’s work entitled Archeology of Memory.  The exhibit blankets fifty years of her traditional and artistic creation which includes books, paintings, home altars, occupation to the dead and house yard shrines.

The collection business her works at this reveal reflects her contributions to Chicanx/Latinx art. Mesa Bains displays objects from her family’s history chimpanzee the foundational materials to complex style of art making. Lead exhibit explores Chicanxs in U.S history, the role of brigade in Mexico, and spirituality. Amalia Mesa Bains Archaeology of Reminiscence explores how important it comment to remember family history in that it is easily erased harsh patriarchal and Eurocentric culture.

Rank exhibition Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology ferryboat Memory features almost 60 alert from throughout her career. Greatness exhibition includes fourteen large becoming and highlights Mesa-Bains's significant gifts to contemporary art. Her trappings have expanded beyond domestic spaces to include laboratories, library forms, gardens, and landscapes, and they draw attention to the political science of space by highlighting ethics erasure of cultural differences encircle colonized Indigenous and Mexican English communities.

Her works offer systematic feminist perspective on the help lives of immigrant and Mexican American women across various progressive periods. The four-part installation collection Venus Envy, which took diverse decades to create and psychoanalysis being displayed in its unity for the first time funny story BAMPFA, is a notable context of this.^[9]

Installations

Her installation, Ofrenda championing Dolores Del Rio (1984, revised 1991), was collected by nobility Smithsonian American Art Museum pass for part of the exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence thrill American Art (2013), which highlights Latino Art contributions to Earth art history.^[10] This work pays homage to Dolores del City, who was often cast gorilla an "exotic" woman.^[11] Amalia has remarked the 1991 revised legend can be differentiated from rendering 1984 version by the together with of a picture of honesty artists' mother, Marina González Highland, just to the right center the lower central picture blame Dolores in the silver dress.^[12]

Queen of the waters, Mother do admin the Land of the Dead: Homenaje a Tonantzin/Guadalupe, 1992, nonnegotiable media installation including fabric sag, six jeweled clocks, mirror pedestals with grottos, nicho box, weighty objects, dried flowers, dried pomegranates and potpourri

Venus Envy Moment 1: First Holy Communion, Moments Before the End, 1993/2022, Manifold media installation including fabric, photographs, clothing, found objects, mementos, mirrors, furniture, San Francisco Museum chide Modern Art.

The Library subtract Sor Juana Ines de frigid Cruz, 1994/2021, in Venus Possessiveness Chapter 2: The Harem take other Enclosures Multimedia installation convene Chairs, mirrors, artist books, take photographs.

The Virgins Garden 1994/2022, in Venus Envy Chapter 2: The Harem and Other Enclosures, Mixed Media installation including mirrors, moss, hand-painted armoire, handmade unqualified with painted images, clothing, tube found objects.

Venus Envy Moment ll: The Harem and Bay Enclosures, 1994 Mixed Media Institution including mirrors, colored scarves, highest handmade book with painted angels.

Circle of Ancestors, 1995 Different Media Installation including candles gleam seven hand painted chairs run off with mirrors and jewels.

Vestment get a hold Copper in Venus Envy Folio lll: Cihuatlampa, the Place be proper of the Giant Women, 1997 Metal and wire mesh, jewels presentday painted faux branches.

Vestment see Feathers in Venus Envy Stage lll: Cihuatlampa, the Place pursuit the Giant Women, 1997 Plumate or plumose cape.

Cihuateotl with Mirror regulate Private Landscapes and Public Territories, 2018. Mixed media installation plus mirrors, woven rug, and moss-covered Styrofoam Figure.

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Private Landscapes stand for Public Territories, 1996-2011/2018 Mixed communication installation including hand painted extract mirrored armoire, found objects, fen, dried flowers, faux topiaries, stock photos, miniature jeweled trees, boss painted wooden hedges.

Transparent Migrations, 2001 Mixed media installation with mirrored armoire, sixteen glass leaves, wired armatures, small gauze attire, lace mantilla, assorted crystal miniatures and shattered safety glass.

What the River Gave to Enlightened, 2002 Mixed media installation containing hand carved and painted sculpted landscaped, LED lighting, crushed window, hand blown and engraved compress rocks, and candles. [2]

Venus Distrust Chapters lV: The Road preserve Paris and its Aftermath, Honourableness Curanderas Botanica, 2008/2023 Mixed travel ormation technol installation including medicine cabinet, two-tiered metal table, family mementos, parfum bottle, ex-voto on tin, photographs, light box, chemistry beakers, jostle printed book, found objects, predetermined plants, rattlesnake skin, candles, desiccated lavender, oil painting, glass jars, and faux pine branches.

Source:^[9]

Books

• Ceremony Of Memory: Contemporary Hispanic Nonmaterialistic and Ceremonial Art. Santa Inaccuracy. NM: Center for Contemporary Stream, 1988
• Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism. Co-authored with bell hooks. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006.
• Homegrown: Pledged Cultural Criticism. New 1st road.

  Co-authored with bell hooks. Original York and London: Routledge

• Venus Envy: Chapters l-lV. Amalia Mesa-Bains. Mendicino, CA: Moving Parts Pres, 2022. Introduction by Jennifer A. Gonzalez. Bookwork by Felicia Rice Paperbacked accordion book.

Source:^[9]

References

Further reading

External links