Past Events

Uplifting resilience, perseverance, accessibility, and movement, the exhibition Fuerza (Strength) will showcase the work of local artists and what they’ve created during the 2020 shelter-in-place.

Celebrate the opening of this landmark exhibition with a moderated virtual preview featuring artists Juan Fuentes, Ester Hernandez, and Zeke Peña and notable collectors Gil Cárdenas, Ricardo and Harriett Romo, Rosa Terrazas, and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto. Join us and explore the importance of Chicanx graphics in American visual culture, Thursday, November 19, at 7 p.m.
REGISTER FOR VIRTUAL CONVERSATION SERIES BY VISITING: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/chicano-graphics
Tuesday, January 26, 6:30 p.m. ET
Cross-Generational Mentorship and Influence
Speakers:
- Juan Fuentes, artist
Dignidad Rebelde (Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes), artists
- Terezita Romo, art historian, curator, and a lecturer and affiliate faculty member at the University of California, Davis
Thursday, February 18, 6:30 p.m. ET
From Black and Brown Solidarity to Afro-Latinidad
Speakers:
- Malaquias Montoya, artist
- Favianna Rodriguez, artist
- Kaelyn Rodríguez, assistant professor in art history at Santa Monica College
- Moses Ros-Suárez, artist
Thursday, March 25, 6:30 p.m. ET
The Legacy of Printmaking
Speakers:
- Jos Sances, artist
- Pepe Coronado, founder of Coronado Print Studio and founding member of the Dominican York Proyecto GRAFICA
- Tatiana Reinoza, assistant professor of art history at the University of Notre Dame
Thursday, April 15, 6:30 p.m. ET
Spirituality and Indigeneity within Chicanx Art
Speakers:
- Enrique Chagoya, printmaker and professor in the department of art and art history at Stanford University
- Yreina D. Cervántez, artist and professor emeritus in the department of Chicana/o studies at California State University at Northridge
- Claudia Zapata, curatorial assistant for Latinx art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Thursday, May 13, 6:30 p.m. ET
Creating in a Digital Sphere
Speakers:
- Michael Menchaca, artist
- Julio Salgado, artist and social justice activist
- Claudia Zapata, curatorial assistant for Latinx art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
In the 1960s, activist Chicano artists forged a remarkable history of printmaking that remains vital today. Many artists came of age during the civil rights, labor, anti-war, feminist and LGBTQ+ movements and channeled the period’s social activism into assertive aesthetic statements that announced a new political and cultural consciousness among people of Mexican descent in the United States. ¡Printing the Revolution! explores the rise of Chicano graphics within these early social movements and the ways in which Chicanx artists since then have advanced innovative printmaking practices attuned to social justice.
More than reflecting the need for social change, the works in this exhibition project and revise notions of Chicanx identity, spur political activism and school viewers in new understandings of U.S. and international history. By employing diverse visual and artistic modes from satire, to portraiture, appropriation, conceptualism, and politicized pop, the artists in this exhibition build an enduring and inventive graphic tradition that has yet to be fully integrated into the history of U.S. printmaking.
This exhibition will be the first to unite historic civil rights era prints alongside works by contemporary printmakers, including several that embrace expanded graphics that exist beyond the paper substrate. While the dominant mode of printmaking among Chicanx artists remains screen-printing, this exhibition will feature works in a wide range of techniques and presentation strategies, from installation art, to public interventions, augmented reality and shareable graphics that circulate in the digital realm. The exhibition will also be the first to consider how Chicanx mentors, print centers and networks nurtured other artists, including several who drew inspiration from the example of Chicanx printmaking.
Artists and collectives featured in the exhibition include Rupert García, Malaquias Montoya, Ester Hernandez, the Royal Chicano Air Force, Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock, David Avalos, Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, Sandra C. Fernández, Juan de Dios Mora, the Dominican York Proyecto GRAFICA, Enrique Chagoya, René Castro, Juan Fuentes, and Linda Lucero, among others.
¡Printing the Revolution! features 119 works drawn from SAAM’s pioneering collection of Latinx art. The museum’s Chicanx graphics holdings rose significantly with an important gift in 1995 from the renowned scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto. Since then, other major donations and an ambitious acquisition program has built one of the largest museum collections of Chicanx graphics on the East Coast.
This exhibition is organized by E. Carmen Ramos, curator of Latinx art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with Claudia Zapata, curatorial assistant. The museum will publish a major catalogue with essays by Ramos and Zapata, as well as contributions by Terezita Romo and Tatiana Reinoza, leading scholars of Chicanx and Latinx graphics.
The inaugural UCSF Healing and Activism Conference is a two-day interprofessional event that provides UCSF students the space to collectively heal, deepen understanding and commitment to social justice, and develop sustainable skills to become activists as emerging health professional leaders in their fields.
Objectives:
-Participants will engage in culturally relevant and responsive practices that center healing and wellness from trauma.
-Participants will critically examine and reflect on the impacts that systems of oppression have in healthcare, science, and research.
-Participants will experience a sense of belonging & humanization
-Participants will gain tangible skills for advocacy that will contribute to their leadership identity and narrative.
Friday, October 9 and Saturday, October 10, 2020
Kindly please register at: tiny.ucsf.edu/HealingConference
Zoom will be provided via email
We invite you to join us for our final SB1070 webinar La Cultura Cura: Stories from the SB 1070 Art–ivist Movement featuring artists and cultural activists Orlando Arenas [Panche be Ink], Melanie Cervantes & Jesus Barraza [Dignidad Rebelde], and Dulce Juarez [Teatro Nopalero]. This discussion will cover the art behind SB1070 and the role art plays in creating a visual and political representation of the immigrant rights movement in Arizona. The webinar will take place on July 29 at 6 PM PST. Register for the webinar at bit.ly/sb1070cultura or watch on Facebook live
An online art exhibit by National Nurses United celebrating Nurses’ Week 2020
The art shown here was commissioned by NNU to emphasize the critical role art plays in resistance, especially in times of crisis — and to connect our struggles for justice and protection in the workplace to broader fights for social justice.
Participating artists:
- Jesus Barraza
- Melanie Cervantes
- Erin FitzGerald
- Sam Huang
- Laura Chow Reeve
- Fernando Martí
- Innosanto Nagara
We encourage everyone to share a piece that spoke to you and ask your friends and family to join the fight at ProtectNurses.org and #ProtectNurses.
Announcing a free online presentation: : “Melanie Cervantes on becoming an artist” (Rated PG-13) , Sunday, April 5, 2020 11:30am-1:30pm PST. If you would like to participate please email melaniecervantes@berkeley.edu to sign up for the Zoom meeting. I will email you all of the details. Participation is limited to 300 people.
I will be telling the story of how I ended up becoming an artist, who shaped my art and how my practice has evolved over time. We will have a significant amount of time allocated for questions and answers and some discussion.
I am so happy to announce my first online offering in a series of talks and workshops I am calling “Creative Connection in the time of “social distance”” and will have a particular focus in two tracks.
Track one will present slideshow based lectures on a variety of topics including art history, sharing stories about the trajectory of our work, how we sustain ourselves as artists and many other topics.
Track two will focus on hands on art making/skill sharing that people can participate in by using materials they likely have at home already.
Since many of you have asked if the content of these online offerings is appropriate for kids I have decided to use the motion picture rating system to guide potential participants/adults in deciding if their kids should participate. (G, PG PG-13,R)
I will be offering the same presentation twice a week. One will happen on a weekday in the evening and the other will happen on a weekend in the the late morning/early afternoon (Pacific Standard Time).
Chicano/a/x Printmaking: Making Prints and Making History – 50 Years of Art Activism is a multi-site exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the SDSU Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. Born in 1969 out of community struggle and a spirit of revolution that persists today, the Chicano Movement’s and CCS’s activist stance is reflected in the exhibition held at the Centro Cultural de la Raza.
Featuring important historical and contemporary examples of printed works on paper, all four sites highlight printmaking as one of the oldest, most enduring, and widely used processes for Chicano/a/x artists working from the 1940s to today.
Chicano/a/x Printmaking at the Centro Cultural will be on display from February 8 to April 5, 2020, with an Opening Reception on February 22 from 6p-8pm. The exhibition highlights the connections and mutual cross-influences of Mexicano and Chicana/o artists who drew on their own respective political concerns and collective demands. In this exhibition, you will see the Mexican precursors and inspirations for Chicana/o/x printmaking, as well as various themes that include self-determination, cultural affirmation, international solidarity, and a deep-rooted engagement with Xicana/o Indigeneity.
This iteration of Chicana/o/x Printmaking is drawn largely from the the Private Collection of Centro Cultural de la Raza, which includes a partial portfolio of original prints from Jose Guadalupe Posada, the Taller de Grafica Popular, as well as a broad array of 1960s and 1970s Chicana/o artists.
Chicano/a/x Printmaking: Making Prints and Making History – 50 Years of Art Activism is organized by the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies in collaboration with the Centro Cultural de la Raza, with support from SDSU Arts Alive. Other sites include the SDSU Downtown Gallery, Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) and The Front.
For more information contact Roberto D. Hernández at rhernandez@sdsu.edu
Partnering Exhibition Sites:
The FRONT Arte & Cultura
Exhibition of works by Salvador Roberto Torres
February 8 – 20, 2020
147 W San Ysidro Boulevard
San Diego, CA 92173
https://thefront.casafamiliar.org/
SDSU Downtown Gallery
Chicano/a/x Printmaking: Making Prints and Making History – 50 Years of Art Activism
February 8 – April 5, 2020
725 W. Broadway
San Diego, CA 92101
https://art.sdsu.edu/sdsu-downtown-gallery/
El Colegio de la Frontera Norte
Chicano/a/x Printmaking: Making Prints and Making History – 50 Years of Art Activism
February 8 – April 5, 2020
Carretera escénica Tijuana – Ensenada, Km 18.5, San Antonio del Mar, 22560 Tijuana, Baja California, México
https://www.colef.mx/
Dignidad Rebelde will be tabling at the 7th annual Queer Magic Makers.
Its that time of year again, and we humbly say, that it will be our last Magic Makers! We are so excited to invite you to the Queerest Healing Craft Fair of the Year, one last time!
Come through for Vending, healing, and community magic! We will have the cutest magical gifts, crafts, medicine, and hotties ♥
Door: 1-1000$ NOTAFLOF
Time: 12pm*-6pm
Place: Humanist Hall
Date: December 8th
Bring: your $$, bring your friends, bring your healing vibes, bring your heart!