Existing comment:
Malaquias Montoya
born Albuquerque, NM 1938
Viet Nam/Aztlan
1973
offset lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Frank K. Ribelin Endowment, 2015.29.3
Montoya's activist artmaking began in the context of the California farm workers' movement but soon referenced the full cultural and political dimensions of the fight for Chicano civil rights. His iconic Viet Nam/Aztlan reveals the links among the antiwar, anticolonial, and civil rights movements. Its design equates Vietnam with Aztlán, the mythic Chicano homeland said to be located in the southwestern United States, identifying Chicanos as a conquered and occupied people. In the middle, a Vietnamese soldier and a Chicano man merge together. At bottom, beneath yellow and brown clenched fists, is the Spanish word Fuera, meaning "get out." |