Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master’s House: Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition

by Alicia Gaspar De Alba

In the early 1990s, a major exhibition Chicano Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 toured major museums around the United States. As a first attempt to define and represent Chicano/a art for a national audience, the exhibit attracted both praise and controversy, while raising fundamental questions about the nature of multiculturalism in the U.S. This book presents the first interdisciplinary cultural study of the CARA exhibit. Alicia Gaspar de Alba looks at the exhibit as a cultural text in which the Chicano/a community affirmed itself not as a "subculture" within the U.S. but as an "alter-Native" culture in opposition to the exclusionary and homogenizing practices of mainstream institutions. She also shows how the exhibit reflected the cultural and sexual politics of the Chicano Movement and how it serves as a model of Chicano/a popular culture more generally. Drawing insights from cultural studies, feminist theory, anthropology, and semiotics, this book constitutes a wide-ranging analysis of Chicano/a art, popular culture, and mainstream cultural politics. It will appeal to a diverse audience in all of these fields.

Genres: Grad School

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Alicia Gaspar de Alba is a scholar, cultural critic, novelist, and poet whose works include historical novels and scholarly studies on Chicana/o art, culture and sexuality.

She is from the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, where she lived until age 27. She has a B.A. (1980) and a M.A. (1983) in English from the University of Texas at El Paso, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico (1994). She started her doctoral work at the University of Iowa in 1985 but left after a year, then lived in Boston, Massachusetts for four years. In 1994, she was hired as one of six founding faculty members of the then César Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana and Chicano Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. She has published and organized a conference on the Juarez murders. Alicia Gaspar de alba also keeps a regular blog called "Cooking With Sor Juana".

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Rachel]

I borrowed this from a colleague. I know plenty about art but not much about Chicano history or art. I was familiar with just a couple Chicano artists before this (Daniel DeSiga,, who has one work in the book, and Alfredo Arreguin, who doesn't, I think) though I had seen reproductions of some of the more popular works.
This was a good intro primer to the Chicano art movement, though it read like it was aimed at folks who are more familiar with Chicano art--or at least Spanish--than I am. Reading it I felt a little young (I'm 31), or a little like I'd missed the previous day's history lecture. I also had to look up phrases and words more oftentimes usual--luckily the translations are in the back.
All that being said, I really enjoyed the book, I would recommend it and It made me want to learn (and see) more.