"This first major retrospective of Amalia Mesa-Bains unearths her significant contributions to Chicanx/Latinx art and feminism.
Best known for her pioneering altar installations, Amalia Mesa-Bains is one of the most innovative feminist and Latinx artists of her generation. In her forty-year career as an artist, activist, educator, and scholar, she has explored the experiences, spiritual practices, and histories of Mexican American women and addressed the colonial erasure and recovery of Mexican, African American, and Indigenous Californians. Appropriately called an ""archaeological"" practice, Mesa-Bains's art creates sacred spaces imbued with cultural memory, leading viewers on a magical journey of discovery through what might otherwise be lost to existing canons of history.
Amalia Mesa-Bains: The Archaeology of Memory is the exhibition catalog accompanying the first major retrospective of her work, bringing her installations from the 1970s to the present together for the first time. Featuring an essay by the artist and an interview with her, the book also brings together top-tier scholars who explore the ecofeminism, migrant histories, spirituality, and politics of erasure that ground her interdisciplinary practice. As a whole, the book cements Mesa-Bains's place as a trailblazing artist within the history of art.
Published in association with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Exhibition dates:
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
February 4-July 23, 2023"
By:
Laura E. Pérez,
Maria Esther Fernández
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 286mm,
Width: 229mm,
Spine: 20mm
Weight: 1.270kg
ISBN: 9780520395718
ISBN 10: 0520395719
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 06 April 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents Director's Foreword Juli Rodrigues Widholm Acknowledgments Laura E. Perez and Maria Esther Fernandez Chapter 1 Amalia Mesa-Bains: Storytelling and the Archaeology of Memory Maria Esther Fernandez Chapter 2 Archaeology of the Immaterial: Absence and Presence in the Installations of Amalia Mesa-Bains Laura E. Perez Chapter 3 Sixty Objects in My Art Life Amalia Mesa-Bains Plates Chapter 4 In Conversation: Amalia Mesa-Bains's Feminisms Lowery Stokes Sims Chapter 5 Unruly Erotic Jennifer A. Gonzales Plates Chapter 6 Flowers and Songs: Memory, Nature, and the Empowered Feminine in the Prints and Books of Amalia Mesa-Bains Adrianna Zavala Chapter 7 The Latino Wunderkammer Tomas Ybarra-Frausto Plates Chronology Exhibition History Selected Bibliography Essay Bibliographies Works in the Exhibition Contributors
Laura E. Pérez is Professor of Chicanx and Latinx Studies and Chair of the Latinx Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. María Esther Fernández is Artistic Director of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, Riverside Art Museum.
