• "150 Years of Printmaking in Mexico: From Jose Guadalupe Posada to the Chicano Experience"
  Rene H. Arceo-Frutos
  5-6 pm, Wednesday, April 5, 2006 co-sponsored by Latino Alliance
  Hokin Hall, Columbia College Chicago, 623 South Wabash
• "Afro Caribbean Religious Aesthetics as Studio Practice"
  Giselle A. Mercier
  12noon - 1pm, Wednesday, April 26, 2006
  Conference Room 311, Columbia College Chicago, 623 South Wabash
• "Latina/o Art in the United States: Mapping Cultural Geographies"
  Víctor Alejandro Sorell
  6-8pm, Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
  Ferguson Hall, Columbia College Chicago, 600 South Michigan

LO ROMÁNTICO: CHICAGO'S LATINO/A ART is an exhibition of Chicago based artists of Latin American heritage focused: 1) to survey Chicago's recent Latino/a cultural production and 2) to explore contemporary expressions on Latino/a art aesthetics. Moreover, this exhibit will fuse installation work, mixed media, new media, photography, painting and sculpture by an emerging Latino/a artistic community. Chicago has a large population of Latin American immigrants residing from different countries from Mexico to Caribbean, Central and South America. The title features the phrase, "lo romantico" which is Spanish for “the romantic”. Using this phrase “the romantic”, the contemporary artistic production presented in this exhibition demonstrates the idea of how immigrants can easily romanticize their heritage due to cultural displacement or the desire of nostalgia.

This exhibition examines how Latino/a artists look at their communities and themselves. Pursuing a visual dialogue within the "hi” and “lo” context of which the mainstream perceives Latino/a art aesthetics and how it is perceived within Latino/a communities. The emerging Chicago Latino/a artistic production does not limit to only popular Latin American motifs but also investigates contemporary concerns within the artistic practice.

The idea of the “romantic” can be interpreted as a nostalgic or reminder of another place. Or the word can mean a new past, sometimes detaching that idea from its origins. Sometimes many communities are subjected to these ideas, like the notion of “Eurocentrism” for Euro-Americans. This has been explored as an exhibition theme before with curator Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum. Golden curated an exhibition of African-American artists examining “Afrocentricity” within their artistic production and community.

In an interview, Golden discussed her main theme: “I had no investment in my picking. I just did it. A lot of that work embraced the notion of Afrocentricity as a real and important intellectual device. I really respect those artists because they've created a world for themselves that operates in a world very different from the world I exist in. But I made the show because I also felt like the kind of high-low paradigm that is a part of talking about what art is for a community of people of African descent was an important thing to address.”

The presence of Latin Americans residing in the US have been there since before the 1848 annexation by the Southwestern states of Texas, New Mexico, etc. Paralleling the 1960’s civil rights movements, the Latin American communities began entering the public universities creating a movement. The majority of this movement focused on the Southwestern Mexican Americans. The term “Chicano” rang the militant stance for those Southwesterners denied of their “American” rights, and on the East Coast, the term ‘Nuyorican’ was to designated Puerto Rican communities in the New York area. These two movements became politically known within the academic circles since 1970’s.

Many artists came out of these movements creating a place for Latin American art in the mainstream cultural institutions, such as the Smithsonian Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. These artistic communities began their cultural production within a social political context. In the late 1960’s, the majority of these Latino/a artists from the Southwest to New York City began new visual languages. Their artistic production challenged the perceived mainstream notions within the “hi” and “lo” culture of their communities and also within the mainstream academic art world. Their work also serves their own communities to readdress and reaffirm cultural values as unrepresented communities, both Latin American immigrants and USA born generations.

For the artists participating in this exhibit, topics are put into perspective of Chicago’s Latino/a communities utilising the working-class sensibility, subverting “Eurocentric” academic theory into their artistic pursuits, identity politics and lastly looking in their own communities for inspiration. Chicana artist Amalia Mesa-Bains wrote on how Chicana artists’ work within their academic theory of utilising sensibilities belonging to academic Chicana artists. She describes it as “domesticana”. She explains as: “… vulgar, inferior, tasteless, and insensible are all terms associated with kitsch. The discourse on kitsch and its relationship to the postmodern avant-garde has been marked by multiple definitions. "

Within the realm of mainstream culture, Latino writer Ed Morales described the current state of ‘Latino/a cultural identity in the US as one construction in that has been ready for a century: “It is a Spanglish space. If the postmodern era is characterized by unprecedented heterogeneity and randomness, then Latinos are well prepared to take advantage of it. We have spent the last several centuries preparing our roles at the first wholly postmodern culture.” -- Guest Curator, Jesus Macarena-Avila.

Special thank you to all the exhibitors for participating and sharing their vision: Amistad Car Club, Yesica Barrera, Paola Cabal, Miguel Cortez, Juan Compean, Amanda Gutierrez, Monica Herrera, Gisela E. Insuaste, Robert Karimi, Claudia Lozano-Alberu, Harold Mendez, Jaime Mendoza, POLVO, Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa, Manuel Sanchez and Edra Soto. A big thank you to Miguel Cortez, Mark Porter, Melissa Saldana, Ana Maria Soto, Pepe Vargas and Gregg Weiss for believing in this show from its conception. And ‘muchas gracias’ to the lecturers participating with the related events: Rene H. Arceo-Frutos, Giselle A. Mercier and Víctor Alejandro Sorell.