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Printing the Revolution!
The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now
During the 1960s and 1970s, Mexican Americans adopted the name "Chicano" as a sign of their new political and cultural identity. Inspired by the labor activism of César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers, Chicanos exposed racism, fought for equal rights, asserted their unique cultural identity, and challenged their invisibility in American society. Printmakers active during these formative years of the Chicano civil rights movement, or El Movimiento, played a pivotal role in projecting this revolutionary new way of being Mexican American in the United States.
This exhibition explores how Chicano artists and their cross-cultural collaborators initiated an enduring, influential, and innovative graphic arts movement attuned to social justice and cultural expression. The term "graphics" captures a wide range of artistic practices. While screenprinting remains prevalent, the artists on view also produce installations and public interventions; several embrace computer graphics and augmented reality (AR). Whether print or digital, each method offers ease of duplication and distribution, key characteristics that allow artists to directly engage people near and far.
Using these expansive approaches and projecting defiance, these artists delve into domestic and global politics and history, feminism, immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights, and other topics. They have also consistently used their art to debate the shifting meanings of Chicano, most recently demonstrated by the rising use of Chicanx, a gender-neutral and nonbinary alternative to Chicano.
¡Printing the Revolution! features about one-fifth of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's extensive collection of Chicanx graphics, the largest museum collection of its kind on the East Coast. Starting in 1995, SAAM received major print donations from Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Gilberto Cárdenas and Dolores García, Drs. Ricardo and Harriett Romo, and the estate of Margaret Terrazas Santos, all of whom saw their collecting as a form of activism. These treasured gifts, and the Museum's own leadership, spotlight the important place of Chicanx graphic arts within the history of U.S. printmaking. |