Existing comment:
Amado M. Peña Jr.
born Laredo, Texas 1943
Mestizo
1974
screenprint on paper
This tripartite face visually represents the concept of a mestizo, or a mixed-race person born to European and indigenous parents. During the early civil rights movement Chicanos adapted this idea, which has a long history in Mexican and Latin American thought and art, as a way to affirm their indigenous heritage. Peña presents the face as a symbol beneath an abstract pattern that resembles Southwest textiles. By the 1980s, Chicana and Chicano thinkers viewed these early claims of mestizaje as a romantic ideal that obscured the troubling history of colonialism and the lived experiences of Native peoples across the Americas.
Gift of Amado M. Peña Sr. and Maria Peña, 1996.47.5 |