“By gathering, slicing, blowing up and remixing archival material, Sandra explores History as an elastic space of practice, one that can be shaped, stretched and expanded while making visible the processes in which dominant narratives are created.” Coming from a lineage of experimental Chicano artists and activists, her perspective is profound there is a powerful nature to the ideas she presents. An East Los Angeles native, Sandra’s work as an archival-based artist is intent on reframing history as we know it by making invisible stories, artifacts, and voices visible. These painters shared their social realities and concerns through massive, emotionally invested murals, holding a mirror to Mexican society at a time in which the country was rebuilding their cultural and political identity “a bridge of solidarity between the artists vision and the public eye,” as described by archival artist/historian and former UCLA professor Sandra de la Loza.ĭe la Loza knows what’s up when it comes to muralism, graffiti, and how these expressions intertwine to reflect the Mexican American experience. In 1921, after a decade of devastating and politically complex civil war, a nationally organized muralist movement began to take hold, led by painters Diego Rivera, Aurora Reyes Flores, Rina Lazo, and the dreamy symbolism of the legendary Siqueiros and Orozco. Their countercultural movements inspired a new batch of artistic revolutionaries that would take these values and apply them in a more socially aware and visually provocative way. Atl and Vasconcelos guided the Mexican people by intertwining theories of labor organization and direct democracy with the social need for emphasis on art, literature, and science. The Mexican Revolution created a pathway for public artistic expression and uprising. Graffiti and muralisms roots can be traced back to prehistoric times (cave paintings in ancient Egypt and Olmec civilizations were, after all, not supremely different in practice) however, its contemporary iteration - particularly in Los Angeles - links directly to early 1900s Mexico in the midst of a bloody Mexican Revolution, which gave rise to a generation of history’s most fierce liberators and revolutionaries. While the average commuter might miss it, there exists an entire ecosystem, history, and ancestry around Los Angeles’ omnipresent street art - one only needs to look up. Over the past three decades, street artists have strategically positioned their works on the slanted concrete slabbed walls of the LA River and atop the train cars and abandoned buildings dotting the Union Pacific rail tracks north into Downtown and East LA - a sort of social reclamation of city’s streets, documentation of social injustices, and a declaration of ownership of the city itself. On any given drive down this stretch of South LA, one can spot out elaborate burners, powerful murals, tags, and throw-ups from the city’s legendary crews and artists like STP, UTI (Under The Influence), LTK (Let Them Know), and OTR, many of whom have been canvassing the industrial LA streets since the mid ‘80s.
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