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Diana L. Sanchez
Diana L. Sanchez (Born Oct.15, 1991)  is a multimedia artist based out of Hawthorne, CA. She was born in Queretaro, Mexico and moved to California where she was 4 years old.

Life
Diana L. Sanchez is an artist based out of Hawthorne, CA. She was born Oct. 15, 1991 in Queretaro, Mexico and moved to California where she was 4 years old. She was inspired to create art after an exhibit at the LACMA, Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement (2008). She went on to earn her AA-T in Studio Art from Santa Monica College and later obtained her BFA in Illustration from CSULB in 2019. As an artist she primarily works with acrylic and gouache. As she mentions in her website biography, she "specializ[es] in figurative work and whimsical illustrations that bring various characters to life." Her work has been displayed at the Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery at Santa Monica College and Gatov West Gallery at CSULB.

Notable Works
In both Abolish ICE I (Fig.2) (13"x13" gouache illustration on paper, 2020) and Abolish ICE II (Fig. 3.1-2) (6"x9" gouache illustration on envelope, 2021) Sanchez was interested in creating illustrations centered around the immigrant experience. She believes it is important to understand that “abolishing ICE means re-imagining a system that doesn’t use immigration as an imaginary threat justifying the injustices and cruelty towards immigrants in this country.” In both pieces she has incorporated the monarch butterfly which is a symbol for migration, resilience, and hope. In these pieces both women wear Abolish ICE messages in their clothing and earrings.

Abolish ICE II was actually part of Port City Creative Guild's "Couriers of Hope" virtual exhibition which can also be viewed in person outside of the historic Psychic Temple in Downtown Long Beach. For this virtual exhibit, over 90 artists transformed envelopes into original small-scale pieces of art that express and explore the emotion of hope. When she began brainstorming for this illustration, she realized that for years “letters were the reliable, accessible, and preferred form of communication used to keep in touch with loved ones across the border. Today there is still something really special about seeing my parents receive letters from my grandparents and family back home (in Queretaro, Guanajuato and Polotitlan, Mexico) after having been separated for decades.” Sanchez decided to create a piece centered around this topic and used a green color scheme symbolic of new beginnings and as mentioned earlier incorporated the butterfly.

Sueños (2020) (Fig.1) is an 18"x24" acrylic painting on panel. She was inspired to create a piece centered around toxic masculinity, after reading an article which examines how the colonization of Mesoamerica and the cultural stripping of the indigenous groups of Latin America caused a toxic means of masculinity. “Dreams represent a collection of thoughts, struggles, emotions, and symbols that are relevant to the dreamer in some way,” Sanchez writes. In this piece, a young man lays sleeping, surrounded by beautiful flowers, he holds a sculpture of a mesoamerican warrior mask. Although the bottom part of the painting is calm and refined, the top part of the painting is quite the opposite. Above the man there are sketches of the mesoamerican warrior mask sculpture smiling and crying—a reference to "smile now cry later". Smile now cry later has become a popular symbol in Latinx culture which is representative of something like "push through difficult situations now, and settle or deal with your emotions later" or "enjoy your fun now, and deal with the consequences later." She wanted this painting to be about a dream in which the dreamer faces what could be his thoughts, struggles, and emotions stemming from this internalized toxic masculinity.