In this authoritative study, Davalos challenges the sometimes hidden, sometimes blatant assumptions that underlie the practice of creating museum exhibits, and asks what happens when people of Mexican (American) descent put themselves in command of the collection, display, and interpretation of their cultural products. 
Advancing a Chicana feminist interpretation, Davalos carefully explores both the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century museum practices and the more recent phenomenon of physically locating Mestizo/Chicano art within "insider spaces," (such as ethnically or racially specific cultural institutions and alternative galleries). Just as public museums instruct visitors about who does and who does not belong to a nation's cultural legacy, Davalos makes clear that exhibitions in so-called minority museums are likewise shaped by notions of difference and nationalism and by the politics of identity and race. 
Davalos pays particular attention to museum and cultural centers in major Mexican diaspora communities, including the Mexican Fine Arts Museum in Chicago and Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco. Throughout she critically examines Chicano, Mexican, Mestizo, and Mexican American subjectivities as they are expressed in curatorial decisions and practices, in educational materials and catalog texts, and in the performances and other public events that accompany museum exhibits. That practice--what Davalos calls "exhibiting mestizaje," produces complex representations of Mexican (Americans). Davalos's analysis shows clearly that the value of mestizaje and diaspora lies in their ability to create a cultural poetics from fluidity and conflict. 
"Davalos accomplishes the difficult task of discussing Chicano art as both aesthetic and political work. She does not reduce artistic expression to political propaganda, but neither does she examine aesthetic issues in isolation from the social processes that give them shape and meaning.--George Lipsitz, Chair, Ethnic Studies Department, UC San Diego

Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora

Davalos, Karen Mary

Reference

University of New Mexico Press

“It is important for us to be visually literate; it is a survival skill. The media is what passes for culture in contemporary U.S. culture, and it is extremely powerful. It is crucial that we systematically explore the cultural misdefinition of Mexicans and Latin Americans that is presented in the media.” —Yolanda López
Chicana artist Yolanda López achieved international recognition for her groundbreaking and controversial Virgin of Guadalupe series of paintings (1975–78) in which she transformed the beloved icon in order to celebrate and sanctify ordinary Mexican and Mexican American women as hardworking, assertive, and vibrant. Born in San Diego, California, López formally trained as a painter but has since expanded into a variety of media, including installation, video, and slide presentations.
Karen Mary Davalos identifies the themes and concerns that unify the artist’s diverse body of work. At times playful, political, and feminist, López is unwavering in her commitment to representing the experiences of Mexican American women in the United States, confronting stereotypes about Latin Americans and challenging U.S. immigration policy.
Karen Mary Davalos is associate professor of Chicano/a studies at Loyola Marymount University and the author of Exhibiting Mestizaje.

Yolanda Lopez (A Ver)

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Chicano Studies Research Center

Rewrites our understanding of the last 50 years of Chicana/o cultural production.   Chicana/o Remix casts new light not only on artists—such as Sandra de la Loza, Judy Baca, and David Botello, among others—but on the exhibitions that feature their work, and the collectors, curators, critics, and advocates who engage it. Combining feminist theory, critical ethnic studies, art historical analysis, and extensive archival and field research, Karen Mary Davalos argues that narrow notions of identity, politics, and aesthetics limit our ability to understand the full capacities of Chicana/o art. She employs fresh vernacular concepts such as the “errata exhibit,” or the staging of exhibits that critically question mainstream art museums, and the “remix,” or the act of bringing new narratives and forgotten histories from the background and into the foreground. These concepts, which emerge out of art practice itself, drive her analysis and reinforce the rejection of familiar narratives that evaluate Chicana/o art in simplistic, traditional terms, such as political versus commercial, or realist versus conceptual.  Throughout Chicana/o Remix, Davalos explores undocumented or previously ignored information about artists, their cultural production, and the exhibitions and collections that feature their work. Each chapter exposes and challenges conventions in art history and Chicana/o studies, documenting how Chicana artists were the first to critically challenge exhibitions of Chicana/o art, tracing the origins of the first Chicano arts organizations, and highlighting the influence of Europe and Asia on Chicana/o artists who traveled abroad. As a leading scholar in the study of Chicana/o artists, art spaces, and exhibition practices, Davalos presents her most ambitious project to date in this re-examination of fifty years of Chicana/o art production.

Chicana/o Remix: Art and Errata Since the Sixties

NYU Press

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