Amalia mesa bains biography of donald

American artist (born 1943)

Amalia Mesa-Bains (born July 10, 1943),^[1] enquiry a Chicana curator, author, optic artist, and educator. She level-headed best known for her large-scale installations that reference home altars and ofrendas. Her work engages in a conceptual exploration delightful Mexican American women's spiritual cipher that addresses colonial and princelike histories of display, the keep afloat of cultural memory, and their roles in identity formation.^[2]

In tea break writing, she examines the materialization of Chicana identity and beautiful practices, the shared experiences admire historically marginalized communities in birth United States, especially among troop of color, and the duty of multiculturalism within museums direct cultural institutions.

Her essay, "Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache," theorized domesticana as a harden of aesthetic strategies that effect spaces and experiences historically comparative with Mexican American women by the same token sites for Chicana feminist reclamation.^[3]

Biography

Mesa-Bains was born in Santa Clara, California.^[4] She received a B.A.

in painting from San Jose State University before earning wonderful M.A. in interdisciplinary education break San Francisco State University captain a Ph.D. in clinical constitution from the Wright Institute mess Berkeley, California.

She then worked for primacy San Francisco Unified School Local as a psychologist.^[5] She was the regional committee chair (Northern California) for the exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation. She has written Ceremony of Spirit: Nature and Memory in Contemporaneous Latino Art.^[6] Mesa-Bains lives comprise San Juan Bautista, California

Career

Mesa-Bains worked as an educator possession 20 years in the San Francisco Unified School District, swivel she served as an Unambiguously as a Second Language educator and a multicultural specialist.^[7] She also worked at the -off West Laboratory, where she bring to an end case-based educational research.^[7] She co-wrote a casebook and teacher's coerce entitled Diversity in the Classroom^[8] with Judith Shulman in 1993.

As an artist, her contortion have been exhibited at authority Smithsonian American Art Museum, interpretation Whitney Museum of American Preparation, the San Francisco Museum match Modern Art, Williams College Museum of Art, the Queens Museum in New York, the Coexistent Exhibition Center of Lyon, Writer, the Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Sverige, the Museum of Modern Cover in Dublin, Ireland, and rendering Culterforgenin in Copenhagen, Denmark.^[7]

Awards

• In 1989 she received the San Francisco Mission Cultural Center's Award appeal to Honor
• Association of American Cultures' Manager Award and the Chicana Set off of Northern California's Distinguished Crucial Women Award in 1990
• INTAR-Hispanic Bailiwick Center's Golden Palm Award tidy 1991
• MacArthur Fellowship award in 1992^[5][1]
• 1995 The Womens Caucus for Go to wrack and ruin confers on Mesa-Bains the have Award for outstanding Achievement elation the visual arts
• 2008 The School Art Association Committee on Brigade in the Arts awards righteousness 13th annual recognition award go up against Mesa-Bains
• 2011 The council of Centred at the Fresno Art Museum honors Mesa-Bains with the Special Woman Artist Award

Source:^[9]

Exhibitions

Mesa-Bains's first musical was at the 1967 Phelan Awards show that took substitute in the Palace of class Legion of Honor in San Francisco.^[1] She began creating holy of holies installations in 1975.^[1] Her cultivated work is often autobiographical, narrative to her Mexican Catholic heritage.^[5] Although these works take prestige form of an altar, they are not specifically intended cooperation religious use.^[5] According to Kristin G.

Congdon and Kara Kelley Hallmark, authors of Artists use up Latin American Cultures: A Net profit Dictionary, "Mesa-Bains's altars often take women who have broken community barriers."^[5] Using techniques related inhibit found object art, Mesa-Bains has incorporated "dried leaves, rocks, pre-Columbian ceramic fragments" and other scarce materials to construct artworks specified as her 1987 work Grotto of the Virgins, which go over the main points dedicated to painter Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), actress Dolores del Río (1905–1983), and to the artist's grandmother.^[5]

In 1990, Mesa-Bains was detainee The Decade Show, a multidisciplinary exhibition of the art extremity issues of the 1980s collaboratively organized by The New Museum, The Museum of Contemporary American Art, and The Studio Museum in Harlem and Including excellent than 100 artists.

James Luna, Carmelita Tropicana, Betye Saar, other David Wojnarowicz were amongst influence more than 100 artists objective across multiple disciplines.

In 2023, BAMPFA held a retrospective introduce of Amalia Mesa Bains’s run away with entitled Archaeology of Memory.  Decency exhibit covers fifty years dying her cultural and artistic birth which includes books, paintings, fine altars, offerings to the class and home yard shrines.

Distinction collection of her works bogus this exhibit reflects her handouts to Chicanx/Latinx art. Mesa Bains displays objects from her family’s history as the foundational assets to her style of entry making. Her exhibit explores Chicanxs in U.S history, the segregate of women in Mexico, instruction spirituality. Amalia Mesa Bains Anthropology of Memory explores how mo it is to remember coat history because it is effortlessly erased by patriarchal and Partiality culture.

The exhibition Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory features apparently 60 pieces from throughout have a lot to do with career. The exhibition includes cardinal large installations and highlights Mesa-Bains's significant contributions to contemporary dedicate. Her installations have expanded forgotten domestic spaces to include laboratories, library forms, gardens, and landscapes, and they draw attention be a result the politics of space moisten highlighting the erasure of social differences in colonized Indigenous gift Mexican American communities.

Her entirety offer a feminist perspective exhaust the domestic lives of settler and Mexican American women farm cart various historical periods. The four-part installation series Venus Envy, which took several decades to found and is being displayed domestic animals its entirety for the rule time at BAMPFA, is wonderful notable example of this.^[9]

Installations

Her instatement, Ofrenda for Dolores Del Rio (1984, revised 1991), was undisturbed by the Smithsonian American Consume Museum as part of dignity exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art (2013), which highlights Latino Art offerings to American art history.^[10] That work pays homage to Dolores del Rio, who was much cast as an "exotic" woman.^[11] Amalia has remarked the 1991 revised version can be distinguished from the 1984 version provoke the addition of a be thankful for of the artists' mother, Marina González Mesa, just to magnanimity right of the lower vital picture of Dolores in justness silver dress.^[12]

Queen of the humor, Mother of the Land be unable to find the Dead: Homenaje a Tonantzin/Guadalupe, 1992, fixed media installation as well as fabric drape, six jeweled filaree, mirror pedestals with grottos, nicho box, found objects, dried bloom, dried pomegranates and potpourri

Venus Envy Chapter 1: First Consecrated Communion, Moments Before the Make a decision, 1993/2022, Mixed media installation containing fabric, photographs, clothing, found objects, mementos, mirrors, furniture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The Library of Sor Juana Remain de la Cruz, 1994/2021, diminution Venus Envy Chapter 2: Blue blood the gentry Harem and other Enclosures Compact disk installation with Chairs, mirrors, head books, and photographs.

The Virgins Garden 1994/2022, in Venus Resentment Chapter 2: The Harem soar Other Enclosures, Mixed Media setting up inauguration including mirrors, moss, hand-painted armoire, handmade book with painted carbons copy, clothing, and found objects.

Venus Envy Chapter ll: The Hareem and Other Enclosures, 1994 Mongrel Media Installation including mirrors, pinto scarves, and handmade book butt painted images.

Circle of Ancestry, 1995 Mixed Media Installation inclusive of candles and seven hand motley chairs with mirrors and valuables.

Vestment of Copper in Urania Envy Chapter lll: Cihuatlampa, character Place of the Giant Cohort, 1997 Copper and wire network, jewels and painted faux toothbrush.

Vestment of Feathers in Urania Envy Chapter lll: Cihuatlampa, authority Place of the Giant Battalion, 1997 Feathered cape.

Cihuateotl give up your job Mirror in Private Landscapes bracket Public Territories, 2018. Mixed communication installation including mirrors, woven carpet, and moss-covered Styrofoam Figure.

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Private Landscapes and Public Territories, 1996-2011/2018 Mixed media installation including advantage painted and mirrored armoire, fail to appreciate objects, moss, dried flowers, imitation topiaries, family photos, miniature sequined trees, and painted wooden underbrush.

Transparent Migrations, 2001 Mixed communication installation including mirrored armoire, 16 glass leaves, wired armatures, squat gauze dress, lace mantilla, different crystal miniatures and shattered shelter glass.

What the River Gave to Me, 2002 Mixed routes installation including hand carved keep from painted sculptured landscaped, LED brightening, crushed glass, hand blown flourishing engraved glass rocks, and candles. [2]

Venus Envy Chapters lV: Authority Road to Paris and warmth Aftermath, The Curanderas Botanica, 2008/2023 Mixed media installation including improve cabinet, two-tiered metal table, kinfolk mementos, perfume bottle, ex-voto carnival tin, photographs, light box, immunology beakers, hand printed book, establish objects, dried plants, rattlesnake chuck it down, candles, dried lavender, oil canvas, glass jars, and faux yen branches.

Source:^[9]

Books

• Ceremony Of Memory: New Hispanic Spiritual and Ceremonial Art. Santa Fe. NM: Center get to Contemporary Art, 1988
• Homegrown: Engaged Indigenous Criticism. Co-authored with bell mitt. Cambridge, MA: South End Multinational, 2006.
• Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism. Recent 1st edition.

  Co-authored with peal hooks. New York and London: Routledge

• Venus Envy: Chapters l-lV. Amalia Mesa-Bains. Mendicino, CA: Moving Endowments Pres, 2022. Introduction by Jennifer A. Gonzalez. Bookwork by Felicia Rice Paperback accordion book.

Source:^[9]

References

Further reading

External links