Queer Chicano art

The Queer Chicano art scene emerged from Los Angeles during the late 1960s and early 1990s composing of queer Mexican American artists. The scene’s activity included motives and themes relating to political activism, social justice, and identity. The movement was influenced by the respective movements of gay liberation, Chicano civil rights, and women’s liberation. The social and political conditions impacting Chicano communities as well as queer people, including the HIV/AIDS epidemic, are conveyed in the scene’s expressive work.

Queer chicano art and community
The queer Chicano scene in Los Angeles represents a convergence of the Chicano art movement and activism for socio-political issues during the 1960s and 70s. The Chicano art movement beginning in the 1960s pushed to create artistic identity for Mexican Americans, but centered a heteronormative and gendered way of being. The queer Chicano art scene rendered a role of sexual difference that was missing from the Chicano art movement at the time. Queer Chicano art dealt with issues of sexuality, gender, ethnicity and belonging, and impact of a generation devastated by the AIDS epidemic.

In the early 1970s, many young artists were moving between different spaces such as art school, alternative art spaces, gay and lesbian clubs, and punk clubs where, artists were producing and presenting art. An underground scene was created mixed with artists, students, runaways, and sex workers.

Queer Chicanos belonged in different intersections between being Mexican American, queer, and resisting gender normativity during a critical time.The queer Chicano art scene in East Los Angeles brought together a lasting community of people who fit together in these intersections and offered a place to move between spaces. Although the efforts of the community aren't well known, the community had a hand of the shaping of Chicano LGBTQ+ history. The strength of the community signifies how fitting in spaces of marginalized identities work together as resistance.

Influences
The 1960s and 70s created a pivotal time for the collaboration of movements in East Los Angeles it became an intersection for the Chicano Movement, gay liberation, and women’s rights.

Chicano movement
The queer Chicano art scene was greatly influenced by the experiences of Chicano civil rights movements. The Chicano Movement (El Movimiento) established during the 1940's to 1970s was a social and political movement organized by Mexican Americans to fight for civil rights, structural racism, and a voice for the community. Throughout this movement, Chicanos worked to unify and create solidarity in the community.

The queer Chicano community in Los Angeles can be viewed as an extension of this solidarity and representing a cultural arm of the civil rights struggle. Queer Chicano artists took from their lived experiences during the Chicano Movement to create a political identity and a mode for self-expression.

Gay liberation
The queer Chicano community drew inspiration from the gay liberation movement in the creation and expression of art. The gay liberation movement began in the late 1960s to 80s as a socio-political movement with the goal to end social and political discrimination for LGBTQ+ people. Despite the Chicano Movement, it was evident to queer Chicanos there was no space for belonging in the political discussion at the time. Queer Chicanos utilized ideologies from gay liberation to establish belonging in the Chicano community and therefore, political discussions.

After the Stonewall riots in 1969, there was a shift for more visibility for queer identity. Different from forms of gay activism, the gay liberation movement highlighted the need for visibility through "coming out" as queer and denying to assimilate to social norms. Artists were emboldened by the ideology of gay liberation to create art representing their sexual identity and denounce heteronormativity. Within the Gay Liberation movement, the queer art scene functioned to create representation and a voice for queer identity.

Women's rights
The queer Chicano scene drew influences from the strides being made within women’s rights during the 1960s and 70s. The Women's Liberation movement fought for political, social, and economic equality between genders. Chicanas were inspired by both breaking gender inequalities and their experiences being queer Mexican Americans.

While, the feminist movement were making strides for change, there still presented a challenge of the exclusion of brown and black bodies within the space. The Feminist Movement and feminist art often centered white bodies and depicted whiteness within their art. As a result, the movement worked to make an inclusive space that simultaneously challenged ideas of patriarchy, racism, and gender. Queer Chicana artists within the movement worked to break gender stereotypes emulated throughout the Latinx community and the Chicano movement. Female artists with Mexican roots, created art against the gendered, patriarchal, and white art world present in the 1970s United States. Consequential queer Mexican American women artists working within this community include Patssi Valdez, Judith Baca, and Laura Aguilar.

Female artists faced challenges in regards to what it meant to be Latina or Chicana. While, the Chicano culture had strong ties with machismo many queer women in the art movement were criticized for not being feminists enough or Chicana enough. As well, created a construction of what being feminism should look like in the 1970s. Patssi Valdez’s Instant Mural, 1974 received much backlash from feminist at the time. Instant Mural, 1974 portrayed Valdez tied up with duct tape looking confined and frozen in space. Feminist were outraged at Valdez for allowing herself to be tied up. Despite, the backlash received from feminist to Valdez her art was doing something she wanted to do and portraying how she felt which for her was activism. As she felt it a metaphor for the confinement of conditions of discrimination and oppression including poverty, social, and psychological issues.

Edmundo "Mundo" Meza
Edmundo "Mundo" Meza also known as Mundo Meza was a Mexican American artist known to be the heart of the scene and activist for the queer Chicano community in Los Angeles. Meza was born in Tijuana, Mexico on July 19, 1955, but was raised in East Lost Angeles. Meza worked through a variety of mediums ranging from abstract paintings, sketches, performances, and window displays, but is most regarded as a painter. His work responded to social issues through Meso-American imagery and illustration of gay liberation. Meza’s work pushed to expand and change awareness of queer Mexican American identity. Meza’s work drew from experiences and shared stories within his network to express identity and fight stigma of stereotypes surrounding the LGBTQIA+ and Mexican American community. He played a crucial role in the collaboration of Chicano artists especially, Roberto "Cyclona" Legorreta.

On February 11, 1985, Meza died of complications of AIDS at the age of 29. After his death, his work continued to create community, belonging, and identity for queer Mexican Americans.

A popular work from Meza, Merman with Mandolin, 1984 illustrates a mythical and idealized version of Meza as a merman portraying beauty and confidence. After being diagnosed with AIDS this portrait alludes to pride and comfortability in one's own skin.

Patssi Valdez
Patssi Valdez was born in 1951 in East Los Angeles in a Hispanic urban culture. In her art, Valdez challenged expectations for Chicana femininity through utilizing overt gender performativity through her art. She documents gender representation using multimedia art, including photography, painting, and performance. Through her art she was able to negotiate and exploit gendered ideologies.

A popular work by Valdez is hand-painted photograph of Sylvia Delgado. The Portrait of Sylvia Delgado, 1980 renders Delgado as a heaviy made-up force of nature, challenging the way femininity was being portrayed in art.

Laura Aguilar
Laura Aguilar was born on October 26, 1959 in San Gabriel, California. She is the daughter of a first-generation Mexican American father and mother of mixed Irish and Mexican descent.

Aguilar is a photographer and a key figure in the Chicano and queer art scene in Los Angeles. Her photography centered identities focusing on large-bodied, working-class Chicana women, at the time were considered background subjects. She has shaped how identities have been perceived as she brought to light issues with mental health and equity in the art world through her chronicling of the body and Chicana identity.

Aguilar's photography of Lesbian Latina examined the heterogeneity of being queer Chicana. Lesbian Latina documented portraits women, including herself from the Chicana Lesbian community in Los Angeles, along with handwritten reflections of their sexual identity below the portraits.