Melanie Cervantes | |
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| Born | Harbor City, CA |
| Alma mater | UC Berkeley |
Melanie Cervantes (born in Harbor City, CA) is a Xicana artist and activist based in the Bay Area.
Melanie Cervantes | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | Harbor City, CA |
| Alma mater | UC Berkeley |
Melanie Cervantes (born in Harbor City, CA) is a Xicana artist and activist based in the Bay Area.
Cervantes grew up in a small city in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, CA. Her father was a paper box printer and her family's poverty helped foster her interest in art, out of the necessity of creating their own clothing and Halloween costumes. She picked up color theory while helping out her mother pick out clothes at the swap market and observed her father construct and repurpose junk in their garage.
Cervantes now lives in San Francisco, California; here, she can enjoy the company of different community groups in her area. She is a voice for the oppressed. In 2004 she graduated UC Berkeley with a bachelor's degree and formal training in ethnic studies. With the knowledge and experience she gained here she became the "artist for the people". She inspired communities by exhibiting struggle and oppression into something an empowering, optimistic, and tangible. [1]
Cervantes had a desire to change the way society views oppressed communities. She has hope for radical and social transformation. Her intentions are to exhibit resistance against oppressed groups to spark awareness and curiosity. Identifying as a member of the Chicanx community she is very aware and in touch with the struggles that not only occur in the Bay Area but around the world as well. In 2007, she co-founded Dignidad Rebelde, a graphic arts collaboration based in the Mission in San Francisco that highlights peoples stories of struggle, vision, hopes and dreams. Like Cervantes's work, they highlight the history of colonialism, genocide and exploitation and the effects of it in today's world. The collaboration is a series of prints and multimedia projects that center around Third World (developing countries) and indigenous movements and the erasure and loss of culture of these people. The posters and prints give power to the people- to transform, change, build, and project. Dignidad Rebelde's purpose is to illustrate stories of struggle, resistance and triumph into artwork that can be put back into the hands of the communities who inspire it. The pieces made are to evoke acceptance.
Cervantes works full-time as a Senior Program Officer at the Akonadi Foundation which supports movement-building organizations working to end structural racism in the United States. While at Akonadi she co-founded the Bay Area Justice Funders Network, an alliance of funders working strengthen grantmaking for social justice movements in the Bay Area and beyond.
As an artist, Cervantes has exhibited at Galería de la Raza (San Francisco); Woman Made Gallery and National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago); Mexic-Arte and Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (Austin, TX); Crewest (Los Angeles); and at the Musée d'Aquitaine (Bordeaux, France). [2] Her work is in public collections of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, the Latin American Collection of the Green Library at Stanford, and the Hispanic Research Center at the Arizona State University as well as various private collections throughout the U.S. She formed Dignidad Rebelde with printmaker Jesus Barraza, a collaborative graphic arts project that uses principles of Xicanisma and Zapatismo to translate stories of struggle and resistance into artwork that can be put back into the hands of the communities who inspire it. [3] Their art highlights issues around immigration, prison reform, Third World liberation movements, and economic injustice. [4]
Her work can also be found in Dylan Miner's book, Creating Azatlán. [5] Cervantes' work has been included in the recent scholarship in Chicana/o studies of revolutionary women of color in Claudia D. Hernández book Women, Mujeres, Ixoq: Revolutionary Visions. [6]
Cervantes is a member of Justseeds Collective, Taller Tupac Amaru, and the Consejo Gráfico. [7]
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José Gabriel Condorcanqui – known as Túpac Amaru II – was an indigenous cacique who led a large Andean rebellion against the Spanish in Peru as self-proclaimed Sapa Inca of a new Inca Empire. He later became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and indigenous rights movement, as well as an inspiration to myriad causes in Spanish America and beyond.
The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) is a Sacramento, California-based art collective, founded in 1970 by Ricardo Favela, José Montoya and Esteban Villa. It was one of the "most important collective artist groups" in the Chicano art movement in California during the 1970s and the 1980s and continues to be influential into the 21st century.
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Favianna Rodriguez is an American artist and activist. She has self-identified as queer and Latina with Afro-Peruvian roots. Rodriguez began as a political poster designer in the 1990s in the struggle for racial justice in Oakland, California. R is known for using her art as a tool for activism. Her designs and projects range on a variety of different issues including globalization, immigration, feminism, patriarchy, interdependence, and genetically modified foods. Rodriguez is a co-founder of Presente.org and is the Executive Director of Culture Strike, "a national arts organization that engages artists, writers and performers in migrant rights. "
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Jesus Barraza is a print maker and graphic artist who started working as a layout editor in 1994 of the Xicana oppositional newspaper La Voz de Berkeley. He worked as a graphic designer for student groups at UC Berkeley, community organizations and with Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez designing Shades of Power, the newsletter for the Institute for Racial Justice.
Las Mujeres Muralistas were an all-female Latina artist collective based in the Mission District in San Francisco in the 1970s. They created a number of public murals throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and are said to have sparked the beginning of the female muralist movement in the US and Mexico. Their murals were colorful and large scale and often focused on themes such as womanhood, culture, beauty, and socio-political change. Patricia Rodriguez, Graciela Carrillo, Consuelo Mendez, and Irene Perez are recognized as the founders and most prominent members of the collective, but other female Chicana artists assisted along the way and even joined later on, such as Susan Cervantes, Ester Hernandez, and Miriam Olivo among others.
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ChismeArte was an avant-garde Chicano magazine published by the LA Latino Writers Association (LALWA) and produced by the Concilio de Arte Popular, a California statewide arts advocacy group of Chicano arts organizations headed by Manazar Gamboa. The magazine began publication in 1976. It was produced by Guillermo Bejarano in the early 1980s. Manazar Gamboa served as Director of LALWA and Editor of ChismeArte from 1981-1983. Organizational members of the People's Art Council included The Teatro Campesino in San Juan Bautista, The Royal Chicano Air Force in Sacramento, Mechicano Art Center in Los Angeles, and The Galeria de la Raza and The Mexican Museum in San Francisco, and The Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego.
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Irene Peréz is a muralist known for her membership in the Latina muralist group, Las Mujeres Muralistas and her contributions to the group mural Maestrapeace, at the Woman's Building in San Francisco, California.
Graciela Carrillo is a Chicana artist and muralist in San Francisco and member of the all-female Chicana/Latina artist group Mujeres Muralistas. She is a co-founder of Galería de la Raza, a gallery utilized to showcase the everyday lives of the Chicano community through art during the Chicano Civil Rights movement through the Chicano muralist movement.
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