 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(March 2022) |
Harry Gamboa Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1951 |
| Known for | Performance art, Photography |
| Movement | Chicano Movement |
| Spouse | Barbara Carrasco |
| Website | harrygamboajr |
Harry Gamboa Jr. (born 1951) is an American Chicano essayist, photographer, director, illustrator, and performance artist. He was a founding member of the influential Chicano performance art collective Asco.
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Gamboa grew up in East Los Angeles, California, surrounded by the activism of the Chicano Movement and the political turmoil of Los Angeles in the 1960s, two factors which would have a major influence on his artistic practice. Gamboa attended Garfield High School, where he helped to organize a student walkout in 1968 as part of the "East L.A. Blowouts", part of a larger string of protests in which 15,000 students walked out of their classrooms demanding educational reform. [1] Following his involvement, Gamboa was identified by the L.A. police as a 'militant' in a testimony before the U.S. Senate, an instance that would jeopardize his opportunity to achieve a higher education through the Education Opportunity Grant. [2]
Despite these setbacks, Gamboa attended California State University, Los Angeles, where he expanded his interest in photography and art-making. During this time, he continued to express an interest in activism and in the Chicano Movement, leading to his recruitment by Francisca Flores in 1970 to be an editor of Regeneración, [3] a magazine that gave new life to the Mexican newspaper of the same name that was created in the build up to the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) by the Magón brothers. [4] Through his involvement with Regeneración, he was able to reconnect with former classmates at Garfield High, Gronk (Glugio Nicandro), Patssi Valdez, and Willie Herrón, whom he recruited to contribute to the magazine. These artists, along with Gamboa, comprised the performance group Asco, which contributed to discourse over the Chincanx identity through their performance works. [5]
As a part of the Asco collective, Gamboa was responsible for the documentation and the artistic direction of several of their performances. They would go on to make performance art together for fifteen years, from 1972 to 1987. Following the end of their collaboration, Gamboa has continued expanding upon his artistic practice, working independently. His recent works consist mainly of photography, video-projects, and performance. [6]
His work has been exhibited by museums nationally and internationally. He has taught, lectured, and/or delivered artist talks and/or panel discussions at various universities and art institutions, including UCLA, University of California, San Diego, Otis College of Art and Design, Parsons School of Design, California State University, Northridge, and the California Institute of the Arts. [7]
Harry Gamboa Jr.'s artistic practice has taken numerous forms, from his collaborative performances as a part of Asco, to his individual projects and following the group's separation in 1987, his roots in activism remain prominent. Among these works are Zero Visibility (1978) and his photographic series, Chicano Male Unbonded (1991), both of which focused on the experience of Chicano men. [8]
The members of Asco (Spanish for "nausea") first began working collaboratively in December of 1972, conceptualizing the "walking mural" in their first performance, Stations of the Cross. In this work, three members of the group (Herrón, Gamboa, and Gronk) dressed in exaggerated costumes of pilgrims and dragged a cardboard cross down Whittier Boulevard, leaving it at the steps of the Marine Corps Recruitment Office. [9] This work critiqued stereotypes of Mexican art by referencing the Mexican muralist tradition, as well as commenting on Mexican Catholic tradition.
Stations of the Cross was followed by one of their most famous performances, in which they signed their names using red spray paint on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This action was in response to the refusal of the curator to include works by Chicano artists in the museum collection, claiming that "Mexicans were not serious [artists]". [10] In their work Spray Paint LACMA, Asco brought attention to Chicanx artists (themselves) and reclaimed the museum space using their signatures. Another well-known work by the group, First Supper (After a Major Riot), took place on December 24, 1974, in which they staged a banquet on a traffic medium of Whittier Boulevard. This work was in response to the LAPD's violent responses to protests or group assemblies on Whittier Boulevard, a major street that runs through Boyle Heights, a historical Chicano neighborhood. [11]
In 2024, Asco's work was included in Xican-a.o.x. Body a comprehensive group exhibition on Chicano art narratives from the 1960s to the present day. The exhibition was on view at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture at the Riverside Art Museum, California, and traveled to the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. The exhibition accompanying publication was released by The Chicago University Press. [12] [13]
Gronk, born Glugio Nicandro, is a Chicano painter, printmaker, and performance artist. His work is collected by museums around the country including the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Los Four was a Chicano artist collective active based in Los Angeles, California. The group was instrumental in bringing the Chicano art movement to the attention of the mainstream art world.
Self Help Graphics & Art, Inc. is a community arts center in East Los Angeles, California, United States. Established in 1970, Self Help Graphics served as a critical locus of activity during the Chicano art movement and is a center for Chicano and Latino artistic production. SHG is most well-known for organizing annual Day of the Dead festivities, in addition to hosting exhibitions and musical performances. Throughout its history, the organization has worked with well-known artists in the Los Angeles area such as Barbara Carrasco, Los Four, the East Los Streetscapers, and Shizu Saldamando.
Salomón Huerta is a painter based in Los Angeles, California. Huerta was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and grew up in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Huerta received a full scholarship to attend the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and completed his MFA at UCLA in 1998.
The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) was founded in 1969 to foster multidisciplinary research efforts at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It is one of four ethnic studies centers established at UCLA that year, all of which were the first of their kind in the nation and have been established for the purpose of understanding of the essential contributions of people of color to U.S. history, thought, and culture. The centers remain the major organized research units in the University of California system that focus on ethnic and racial communities and contribute to the system's research mission.
Diane Gamboa has been producing, exhibiting and curating visual art in Southern California since the 1980s. She has also been involved art education, ranging from after-school programs to college and university teaching. Gamboa has been "one of the most active cultural producers in the Chicana art movement in Los Angeles." She actively developed the Chicano School of Painting.
Patssi Valdez is an American Chicana artist. She is a founding member of the art collective Asco. Valdez's work represents some of the finest Chicana avant-garde expressionism, working with an array of mediums, such as painting, sculpture, and fashion design. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Willie F. Herrón III is an American Chicano muralist, performance artist and commercial artist. Herrón was also one of the founding members of ASCO, the East Los Angeles based Chicano artists collective .
Asco was an East Los Angeles based Chicano artist collective, active from 1972 to 1987. Asco adopted its name as a collective in 1973, making a direct reference to the word's significance in Spanish ("asco"), which is disgust or repulsion. Asco's work throughout 1970s and 1980s responded specifically to socioeconomic and political problems surrounding the Chicano community in the United States, as well the Vietnam War. Harry Gamboa Jr., Glugio "Gronk" Nicandro, Willie F. Herrón III and Patssi Valdez form the core members of the group.
Laura Aguilar was an American photographer. She was born with auditory dyslexia and attributed her start in photography to her brother, who showed her how to develop in dark rooms. She was mostly self-taught, although she took some photography courses at East Los Angeles College, where her second solo exhibition, Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, was held. Aguilar used visual art to bring forth marginalized identities, especially within the LA Queer scene and Latinx communities. Before the term Intersectionality was used commonly, Aguilar captured the largely invisible identities of large bodied, queer, working-class, brown people in the form of portraits. Often using her naked body as a subject, she used photography to empower herself and her inner struggles to reclaim her own identity as "Laura" – a lesbian, fat, disabled, and brown person. Although work on Chicana/os is limited, Aguilar has become an essential figure in Chicano art history and is often regarded as an early "pioneer of intersectional feminism" for her outright and uncensored work. Some of her most well-known works are Three Eagles Flying, The Plush Pony Series, and Nature Self Portraits. Aguilar has been noted for her collaboration with cultural scholars such as Yvonne Yarbo-Berjano and receiving inspiration from other artists like Judy Dater. She was well known for her portraits, mostly of herself, and also focused upon people in marginalized communities, including LGBT and Latino subjects, self-love, and social stigma of obesity.
Sandra de la Loza is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles. She is the founder and only official member of the Pocho Research Society of Erased and Invisible History (2001), a collaborative project working with artists, activist, and historians to investigate place and memory through public interventions.
Christina Fernandez is an American photographer. She is an associate professor and co-chair of the photography department at Cerritos College.
Yreina Cervantez is an American artist and Chicana activist who is known for her multimedia painting, murals, and printmaking. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Mexican Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
Barbara Carrasco is a Chicana artist, activist, painter and muralist. She lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work critiques dominant cultural stereotypes involving socioeconomics, race, gender and sexuality, and she is considered to be a radical feminist. Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
Celia Álvarez Muñoz is a Chicana mixed-media conceptual artist and photographer based in Arlington, Texas.
Jay Lynn Gomez is an American painter based in West Hollywood, California. Her artwork addresses social justice issues, focusing specifically on topics of immigration, race, and labor. Much of her work highlights the efforts of unseen laborers who maintain landscapes and produce luxury products.
Justin Favela is an American mixed-media artist who is known for making large-scale installations and sculptures in the piñata style or medium. His work references pop culture, art history, society, cultural commentary, and his own Guatemala-Mexican-American heritage that is rooted in growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada. His works often celebrate his identity as a queer person of color raised in the Southwest United States while challenging the ideas of Latinidad and cultural appropriation.
Isabel Castro, also known as Isabel Castro-Melendez, is a Mexican American artist born in Mexico City. She was raised and still resides in Los Angeles, California. Aside from being an artist, Castro's career includes curatorial work, education, journalism and photography.
Edmundo Meza, also known as Mundo Meza, was an artist and activist who was born in Tijuana, Mexico and grew up in East Los Angeles. He discovered his passion for the area's avant-garde culture in early 1970. As an emerging artist, Mundo Meza worked for shoe designer Fred Slatten on Santa Monica Boulevard as a window dresser. He also painted unique designs onto Slatten's platform shoes, gathering a celebrity clientele which included Cher, Elton John, and Diana Ross.
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, known as The Cheech, is a museum in Riverside, California. It is part of the larger Riverside Art Museum. The center is focused on the exhibition and study of Chicano art from across the United States. This is a collaborative effort between Cheech Marin, the City of Riverside and Riverside Art Museum. Cheech Marin is a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and collector. He has donated or promised his collection of more than 700 pieces of Chicano art. Riverside provides the old Riverside public library to house the collection and the Riverside Art Museum manages the center. The Cheech strives to be a world-class institution for the research and study of "all things [related to] Chicano art". It is the first North American museum facility dedicated exclusively to Mexican-American and Chicano art.
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