Natalia Anciso

Last updated
Natalia Anciso
Natalia Anciso PFW15.jpg
Natalia Anciso in Paris, 2015.
Born (1985-03-25) March 25, 1985 (age 38)
Weslaco, Texas
Nationality American
Education The University of Texas at Austin
California College of the Arts
University of California, Berkeley
Known for Visual art, installation art
Notable workSmile Series, Pinches Rinches Series, Platicando con las Comadres,School Series, Don't Shoot
Movement Contemporary art [1]

Natalia Anciso (born March 25, 1985) is an American Chicana-Tejana contemporary artist and educator. Her artwork focuses primarily on issues involving Identity, especially as it pertains to her experiences growing up along the U.S.-Mexico Border, [2] via visual art and installation art. Her more recent work covers topics related to education, human rights, and social justice, which is informed by her experience as an urban educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. [3] She is a native of the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and currently lives and works in Oakland, California. [4]

Contents

Biography

Natalia Anciso was born in Weslaco, Texas in 1985, the eldest of three children to Armando and Idalia Anciso. [5] A fifth-generation Tejana, her family has resided along the Texas Borderlands since the Texas Revolution. [6] Her family lineage has been traced to San Nicolás de los Garza near Monterrey, in the Mexican state of Nuevo León, as well as to Tejones y Sacatiles Indians indigenous to the areas surrounding the Zacatal Ranch between Relampago and Santa Maria, along the Rio Grande. [7] [8]

Shortly after her birth, Anciso's family moved to Austin, where they would reside until she was the age of 10. She would eventually move back to the Rio Grande Valley to her parents' hometown of Mercedes, Texas, graduating from Mercedes High School in 2003. Coming from a long line of migrant farmworkers and laborers, Anciso is the first in her family to graduate from college. [9] She earned her B.A. in Studio Art at The University of Texas at Austin in 2008, before moving to the Fruitvale District of Oakland, California, earning her Master of Fine Arts at California College of the Arts in 2011. [10] A Berkeley Distinguished Graduate Fellow, Anciso earned her M.A. in Education at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Education in 2015. [11]

Work

Art

Pinches Rinches (detail), "Joe" (2011) by Natalia Anciso. Pen, watercolor, and embroidery on fabric. Pinches Rinches Joe 2011.png
Pinches Rinches (detail), "Joe" (2011) by Natalia Anciso. Pen, watercolor, and embroidery on fabric.

Anciso creates art predicated on realities and legends of her upbringing. Her works are visual records of family, community, and border culture along her native Rio Grande. Her work has historically covered issues surrounding the Borderlands, which have long been subject to poverty, human trafficking, and the drug war. [12] She depicts Chicano history and struggles on both sides of the border in her work, especially as it pertains to the notion of Identity. [13]

Pinches Rinches Series by Natalia Anciso, as seen from Galeria de la Raza's Studio 24, on the corner of 24th and Bryant in the Mission District of San Francisco. Pinches Rinches Series on view.png
Pinches Rinches Series by Natalia Anciso, as seen from Galeria de la Raza's Studio 24, on the corner of 24th and Bryant in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Anciso researches vernacular arts like pano arte, handkerchief art believed to have emerged from Chicano prisoners in the 1940s, and the huipil, embroidered Mayan textiles worn by indigenous women in Southern and Central America. These art forms are reconfigured to tell contemporary stories of life along the Texas/Mexico border. Using pen, pencil, and paint on domestic textiles such as handkerchiefs, pillowcases, and bed sheets, Anciso's work examines psycho-political struggles of life along La Frontera. Specific subjects include the lynchings of Mexicans and Tejanos in Texas from the Texas Rangers, as evident in her Pinches Rinches series, which draws from both historical references and stories of her family in the Rio Grande Valley. [14]

Much of Anciso's research and work surrounding her native Borderlands and her personal identity as a Mexican-American, informed a deeper self-critique and understanding of the complexities of being a Tejana in the Rio Grande Valley. On bridging her dual identities as both a Texan and as an American-born Mexican, Anciso came to a new realization of herself and identity.

I love having those two cultures...I love that duality, that being in between. I didn’t like it in the beginning, but now that I’m older, I love it. I’m proud to be Mexican. I’m proud to be Tejana. [15]

Her most recent work covers issues around education, human rights, class and race, as evident in her piece, Don't Shoot (2014), which is featured as the cover of the globally-released human rights education book, Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms: Exemplary Models from Elementary Grades to University, published by London-based Palgrave Macmillan and edited by University of San Francisco professors, Dr. Susan Roberta Katz and Dr. Andrea McEvoy Spero. [16] In the book's final chapter titled, "Afterword: Will Human Rights Education Be Decolonizing?," Dr. K. Wayne Yang, associate professor of ethnic studies at University of California, San Diego, makes a reference to Anciso and connects her work on her native La Frontera in the Texas Borderlands with that of the plight of "urban frontiers" in Detroit, Ferguson, Oakland, New Orleans and Watts, Los Angeles. [17]

Anciso's art has been included in exhibitions throughout the country and internationally. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the San Jose Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of California, the Vincent Price Art Museum of Los Angeles (as part of the MexiCali Biennial), the Mexic-Arte Museum of Austin, the Smithsonian-affiliated Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture of San Antonio, the National Museum of Mexican Art and the Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago, Centro Cultural de la Raza of San Diego, Galeria de la Raza of San Francisco, the historic residence museum of the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for the Arts and Crafts, a Smithsonian Affiliate in Alta Loma, California (in conjunction with Los Angeles-based Craft in America), [18] the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum in Albuquerque [19] and Recyclart in Brussels, Belgium.

Education

Don't Shoot (2014) by Natalia Anciso. Made with Ink, graphite, prisma, and watercolor on paper. Don't Shoot 2014.png
Don't Shoot (2014) by Natalia Anciso. Made with Ink, graphite, prisma, and watercolor on paper.

In addition to practicing art and exhibiting her work, Anciso has taught art to a diverse array of youth through non-profit organizations, ranging from the Oakland Leaf Foundation's Urban Arts Program in the Fruitvale District of East Oakland to the Summer Institute for the Gifted at the University of California, Berkeley. She also worked as Art Director for the Mission Clubhouse of the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco. [20]

For several years, she has taught Grades K-8 as a Substitute Teacher, both day-to-day and long-term, in the San Lorenzo Unified School District, the San Leandro Unified School District, and the Oakland Unified School District. [21] In fulfillment of her teaching credential requirements, Anciso finished her student teaching in elementary schools in East Oakland through the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Education's Developmental Teacher Education program. She currently teaches full-time at an urban elementary school in the East Bay. [22]

Anciso has collaborated with the likes of the Princeton Theological Seminary's Zoe Project [23] and the Rex Foundation's The World As It Could Be Human Rights Education Program. [24]

She has also facilitated various art workshops as a guest lecturer and speaker to undergraduates, as well as Master's and Doctoral students through the University of San Francisco School of Education, [25] the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (with the campus's MEChA organization), [26] and The George Washington University [27] among other venues and forums.

Recognition

Natalia Anciso (right) with author Sandra Cisneros (left) Natalia Anciso and Sandra Cisneros.jpg
Natalia Anciso (right) with author Sandra Cisneros (left)

Anciso's contributions as an artist have been acknowledged by The Huffington Post , who identified her as one of "13 Latina Artists Under 35 You Should Know," [28] as well as Latina Magazine , which named her as an Innovator in their Latina 30 Under 30 list of the "Brightest Young Stars in Film, Music, Social Media and Activism." [29]

Anciso was included in Elle Magazine's 30th Anniversary Issue, as part of its feature portfolio, “This is 30,” which was photographed by renowned American photographer Mark Seliger, and styled by Brandon Maxwell. The portfolio highlights 35 women who are recognized as "outstanding musicians, comedians, politicians, artists, activists, novelists, athletes, and actors" who turned 30 in 2015. She appears in a double-page spread with supermodel, Bar Refaeli, actress, model and trans activist, Carmen Carrera, and actress and recording artist, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. [30]

More recently, TVyNovelas named Anciso to their "Lideres de la Hispanidad/Los 50 hispanos más importantes de hoy" list of accomplished Latinos. In the Arte category, she is joined by Los Angeles Philharmonic music director, Gustavo Dudamel, and photographer, Omar Cruz. [31]

On the day of his confirmation, 10th United States Secretary of Education John King, Jr. referenced Anciso alongside other contemporary artists in his piece for Medium, titled, "What I Hope Students (and Education Policymakers) will see in Hamilton," highlighting Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit Broadway musical, Hamilton , and the importance of social studies, civic education, and the arts. In it he asks, "How can we expect a student to make the next Hamilton or to become the next Kara Walker, Natalia Anciso, or Kehinde Wiley if she's never been inside a theater, analyzed a painting, or had the chance to deeply study American history?" [32]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Chicano Air Force</span> Art collective in Sacramento, California

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norma Elia Cantú</span> American writer

Norma Elia Cantú is a Chicana postmodernist writer and the Murchison Professor in the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicana feminism</span> Sociopolitical movement

Chicana feminism is a sociopolitical movement, theory, and praxis that scrutinizes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections impacting Chicanas and the Chicana/o community in the United States. Chicana feminism empowers women to challenge institutionalized social norms and regards anyone a feminist who fights for the end of women's oppression in the community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yolanda López</span> Mexican-American painter and activist (1942–2021)

Yolanda Margarita López was an American painter, printmaker, educator, and film producer. She was known for her Chicana feminist works focusing on the experiences of Mexican-American women, often challenging the ethnic stereotypes associated with them. Lopez was recognized for her series of paintings which re-imagined the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe. Her work is held in several public collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Ester Hernández is a California Bay Area Chicana visual artist recognized for her prints and pastels focusing on farm worker rights, cultural, political, and Chicana feminist issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Galería de la Raza</span>

Galería de la Raza (GDLR) is a non-profit art gallery and artist collective founded in 1970, that serves the largely Chicano and Latino population of San Francisco's Mission District. GDLR mounts exhibitions, hosts poetry readings, workshops, and celebrations, sells works of art, and sponsors youth and artist-in-residence programs. Exhibitions at the Galería tend to feature the work of minority and developing country artists and concern issues of ethnic history, identity, and social justice.

Nora Chapa Mendoza is a Texas-born artist. She has been named Michigan Artist of the Year and in 1999 she received the Governor's Arts Award. In 1996, she was one of eight artists that participated in the renovation of Detroit's Music Hall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linda Vallejo</span> American artist (born 1951)

Linda Vallejo is an American artist known for painting, sculpture and ceramics. Her work often addresses her Mexican-American ethnic identity within the context of American art and popular culture. The founder of the commercial art gallery Galería Las Américas, she is also an arts educator and has been involved intraditional Native American and Mexican rituals and ceremonies for many years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Favianna Rodriguez</span>

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. "

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jovita Idar</span> American journalist, teacher, and activist (1885–1946)

Jovita Idar Vivero was an American journalist, teacher, political activist, and civil rights worker who championed the cause of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. Against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, which lasted a decade from 1910 through 1920, she worked for a series of newspapers, using her writing to work towards making a meaningful and effective change. She began her career in journalism at La Crónica, her father's newspaper in Laredo, Texas, her hometown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judithe Hernández</span> American Chicana artist

Judithe Hernández is an American artist and educator, she is known as a muralist, pastel artist, and painter. She is a pioneer of the Chicano art movement and a former member of the art collective Los Four. She is based in Los Angeles, California and previously lived in Chicago.

Juana Alicia is an American muralist, printmaker, educator, activist and, painter. She has been an educator for forty years. Juana Alicia, as part of the faculty Berkeley City College, founded and directed the True Colors Public Art program. Her sculptures and murals are principally located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Nicaragua, Mexico, Pennsylvania, and in many parts of California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">René Yañez</span>

René Yañez was a Mexican-American painter, assemblage artist, performance artist, curator and community activist located in San Francisco, California. He was a well-known contributor to the arts of San Francisco and is a co-founder of Galería de la Raza, a non-profit community focused gallery that features Latino and Chicano artists and their allies. In the early 1970s, he was one of the first curators in the United States to introduce Mexico's Día de Muertos as a contemporary focus and an important cultural celebration.

María Teresa García Pedroche is an American award winning artist and curator.

Teresa Serrano (1936) is a Mexican painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. She gained recognition through her work in filmmaking in the mid to late 1990s. Her main focus has been "to make forceful commentaries on power relationships, sexism, and violence against women".

Lorraine Garcia-Nakata is an American artist who works with various mediums including pastel, charcoal, ceramics, printmaking, installation, sculpture, and paint. Her work surrounds themes of the daily life, portraiture, and realism and is known for her large scale artworks. She is a member of the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) artist collective since 1974.

Celia Herrera Rodriguez is an educator, painter, and performance and installation artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geri Montano</span>

Geri Montano, otherwise known as Geralyn Marie Montano, is a contemporary Native American artist who incorporates themes of Native American heritage, feminism, and societal issues into her work.

Juanita Jaramillo Lavadie is a contemporary weaver, textile scholar and muralist based in New Mexico. Her art is centered on the acequia system in Taos County, Northern, New Mexico and is influenced by traditional Hispano and Indigenous cultures. Her work primarily focuses on water rights in Taos County.

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.

References

  1. ↑ Priscilla Frank (July 7, 2014). "13 Young Latina Artists Changing the Contemporary Art Landscape". HuffPost . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  2. ↑ Maureen Davidson (April 10, 2012). "Mexicanismo at San Jose Museum of Art" . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  3. ↑ Natalia Anciso (2015). "Natalia Anciso - Biography" . Retrieved March 24, 2015.
  4. ↑ Priscilla Frank (July 7, 2014). "13 Young Latina Artists Changing the Contemporary Art Landscape". HuffPost . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  5. ↑ Natalia Anciso (2017). "Natalia Anciso - Biography" . Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  6. ↑ Galeria de la Raza (2014). "Studio 24 Presents: Natalia Anciso" . Retrieved February 1, 2015.
  7. ↑ "Zacatal was home to tribe of Indians". The Mercedes Enterprise. Mercedes, TX. 1992-08-19.
  8. ↑ John J. Leffler (August 2013). "Refute on the Rio Grande: A Regional History of Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park" (PDF). Retrieved October 9, 2017.
  9. ↑ Natalia Anciso (2015). "Natalia Anciso - Biography" . Retrieved March 24, 2015.
  10. ↑ Galeria de la Raza (2014). "Studio 24 Presents: Natalia Anciso - A series of window installations and displays by local artists" . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  11. ↑ Natalia Anciso (2015). "Natalia Anciso - Biography" . Retrieved August 20, 2015.
  12. ↑ Maureen Davidson (April 10, 2012). "SanJose.com Mexicanismo at San Jose Museum of Art" . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  13. ↑ Arielle Castillo (November 14, 2014). "At the #Latina30Under30 party, Fifth Harmony, ABC Family owned the night" . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  14. ↑ Galeria de la Raza (2014). "Studio 24 Presents: Natalia Anciso - A series of window installations and displays by local artists" . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  15. ↑ Cat Cardenas (September 16, 2016). "Alumna embraces inner conflict, Mexican American heritage through her artwork". The Daily Texan. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  16. ↑ Spero, Andrea Mcevoy (9 April 2015). Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms: Exemplary Models from Elementary Grades to University. ISBN   978-1137471123.
  17. ↑ Yang, K. Wayne (2015). "Afterword: Will Human Rights Education Be Decolonizing?". In Katz, Susan Roberta; Spero, Andrea McEvoy (eds.). Bringing Human Rights Education to US Classrooms Exemplary Models from Elementary Grades to University. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 233–234. ISBN   978-1137471123.
  18. ↑ Craft in America (2015). "California Handmade: State of the Arts" . Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  19. ↑ Adrian Gomez (April 29, 2016). "Exhibition features major themes of the book that inspired it" . Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  20. ↑ Galeria de la Raza (2014). "Studio 24 Presents: Natalia Anciso - A series of window installations and displays by local artists" . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  21. ↑ Natalia Anciso (2015). "Natalia Anciso - Curriculum Vitae" . Retrieved March 30, 2015.
  22. ↑ Natalia Anciso (2016). "Natalia Anciso - Curriculum Vitae" . Retrieved February 1, 2016.
  23. ↑ The Zoe Project of the Princeton Theological Seminary (2017). "The Expedition" . Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  24. ↑ The World As It Could Be (2017). "Natalia Anciso CV" . Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  25. ↑ Natalia Anciso (2015). "Natalia Anciso CV" . Retrieved June 4, 2015.
  26. ↑ UIUC (March 16, 2015). "M.E.Ch.A. de UIUC Presents 8th Annual Semana de la Mujer" . Retrieved June 4, 2015.
  27. ↑ Natalia Anciso (2016). "Natalia Anciso CV" . Retrieved February 1, 2016.
  28. ↑ Priscilla Frank (July 7, 2014). "13 Young Latina Artists Changing the Contemporary Art Landscape". HuffPost . Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  29. ↑ Celia Shatzman,"The Incredibles: Latina's 30 Under 30 List Highlights the Brightest Young Stars in Film, Music, Social Media and Activism." Latina Magazine, (NY: Latina Media Ventures LLC, Dec 2014/Jan 2015), 100
  30. ↑ "This is 30." ELLE Magazine, (NY: Hearst Communications, Inc, September 2015), 646-647, 663
  31. ↑ "FOTOS: LOS 50 HISPANOS MÁS IMPORTANTES DE HOY". September 20, 2017. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  32. ↑ "What I Hope Students (and Education Policymakers) will see in Hamilton". March 14, 2016. Retrieved March 19, 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.