This roundtable discussion will be facilitated by co-curators of Xicanx: Dreamers + Changemakers / Soñadores + creadores del cambio, Greta de León and Jill Baird, and select exhibition artists, including David Zamora Casas, Linda Vallejo, Judith Baca, Delilah Montoya, Celia Álvarez Muñoz, and Alfred Quiroz. This discussion is an opportunity to learn more about the artists’ works in relation to the themes of activism, neighbourhood, identity, home and borderlands featured in the exhibition.

Snacks and refreshments will be provided.

Bios

David Zamora Casas is an award-winning multimedia genderfluid painter, performance activist, and installation artist who has engaged audiences under the pseudonym Nuclear Meltdown since 1985. Casas’ work, which focuses on LGBTQ+ and marginalized communities, features his refusal to be marginalized by mainstream, conservative, heteronormative systems.

Linda Vallejo creates works that investigate contemporary cultural and political issues, visualizing what it means to be a person of color in the United States. She states that these works reflect what she calls her “brown intellectual property”—the experiences, knowledge, and feelings gathered over more than four decades of study of Latino, Chicana/o, and American Indigenous culture and communities.

Delilah Montoya is a photographic printmaker based in New Mexico, the ancestral home of her mother’s family. Her work is grounded in the mestizo/a experience of the Southwest and borderlands. As a Chicana feminist and a product of a strong matriarchal tradition, her work explores the unusual relationships that result from negotiating different ways of seeing the world around her.

Celia Álvarez Muñoz is a conceptual artist from Texas known for her diverse multimedia works, including artist’s books, photography, installation, and public art. The book Celia Álvarez Muñoz by writer/poet Roberto Tejada surveys her career.

Judith F. Baca has been creating public art for four decades.  Her murals are powerful in size and subject matter, and bring art to where people live and work. In 1974, Baca founded the City of Los Angeles’ first mural program, that has produced over 400 murals and employed thousands of local participants. It has evolved into the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) where Baca serves as artistic director.

Alfred J. Quiroz tackles injustices with a sense of humour and an edge of satire. Deeply researched, the events he highlights in his works are often forgotten traumas or racial stereotypes offered up with glossy garish paint. Now a Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, Quiroz has enjoyed a long history as an art educator, joining the University in 1989 as an Assistant Professor and retiring in 2008.

This event was funded in part by a grant from the United States Department of State. The opinions, findings and conclusions stated herein are those of the organizers and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of State.