Amalia Mesa-Bains

Amalia Mesa-Bains (born July 10, 1943),[1] is a curator, author, visual artist, and educator. She is best known for her large-scale installations that reference home altars and ofrendas. Her work engages in a conceptual exploration of Mexican American women's spiritual practices that addresses colonial and imperial histories of display, the recovery of cultural memory, and their roles in identity formation.[2]

Amalia Mesa-Bains
Born (1943-07-10) July 10, 1943
Santa Clara, California
AwardsSan Francisco Mission Cultural Center's Award of Honor
Association of American Cultures' Artist Award
Chicana Foundation of Northern California's Distinguished Working Women Award
San Francisco Mission Cultural Center's Award of Honor
Visionary Woman Award, Moore College of Art & Design
MacArthur Foundation Fellow

In her writing, she examines the formation of Chicana identity and aesthetic practices, the shared experiences of historically-marginalized communities in the United States, especially among women of color, and the role of multiculturalism within museums and cultural institutions. Her essay, "Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache," theorized domesticana as a set of aesthetic strategies that use spaces and experiences historically associated with Mexican American women as sites for Chicana feminist reclamation.[3]

Biography

Mesa-Bains was born in Santa Clara, California.[4] She received a B.A. in painting from San Jose State University before earning a M.A. in interdisciplinary education from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. She then worked for the San Francisco Unified School District as a psychologist.[5] She was the regional committee chair (Northern California) for the exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation. She has written Ceremony of Spirit: Nature and Memory in Contemporary Latino Art.[6] Mesa-Bains lives in San Juan Bautista, California

Career

Mesa-Bains worked as an educator for 20 years in the San Francisco Unified School District, where she served as an English as a Second Language teacher and a multicultural specialist.[7] She also worked at the Far West Laboratory, where she performed case-based educational research.[7] She co-wrote a casebook and teacher's guide entitled Diversity in the Classroom[8] with Judith Shulman in 1993. As an artist, her works have been exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Williams College Museum of Art, the Queens Museum in New York, the Contemporary Exhibition Center of Lyon, France, the Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Sweden, the Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland, and the Culterforgenin in Copenhagen, Denmark.[7]

Awards

In 1989 she received the San Francisco Mission Cultural Center's Award of Honor, Association of American Cultures' Artist Award and the Chicana Foundation of Northern California's Distinguished Working Women Award in 1990, INTAR-Hispanic Arts Center's Golden Palm Award in 1991, and the MacArthur Fellowship award in 1992.[5][1]

Exhibitions

Mesa-Bains's first exhibit was at the 1967 Phelan Awards show that took place in the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.[1] She began creating altar installations in 1975.[1] Her artistic work is often autobiographical, relating to her Mexican Catholic heritage.[5] Although these works take the form of an altar, they are not specifically intended for religious use.[5] According to Kristin G. Congdon and Kara Kelley Hallmark, authors of Artists from Latin American Cultures: A Biographical Dictionary, "Mesa-Bains's altars often honor women who have broken social barriers."[5] Using techniques related to found object art, Mesa-Bains has incorporated "dried leaves, rocks, pre-Columbian ceramic fragments" and other unusual materials to construct artworks such as her 1987 work Grotto of the Virgins, which is dedicated to painter Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), actress Dolores del Río (1905–1983), and to the artist's grandmother.[5]

In 1990, Mesa-Bains was in The Decade Show, a multidisciplinary exhibition of the art and issues of the 1980s collaboratively organized by The New Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, and The Studio Museum in Harlem and Including more than 100 artists. James Luna, Carmelita Tropicana, Betye Saar, and David Wojnarowicz were amongst the more than 100 artists included across multiple disciplines.

Collections

Her installation, Ofrenda for Dolores Del Rio (1984, revised 1991), was collected by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art (2013), which highlights Latino Art contributions to American art history.[9] This work pays homage to Dolores del Rio, who was often cast as an "exotic" woman.[10] Amalia has remarked the 1991 revised version can be differentiated from the 1984 version by the addition of a picture of the artists' mother, Marina González Mesa, just to the right of the lower central picture of Dolores in the silver dress.[11]

References
  1. Telgen, page 272-273
  2. Durón, Maximilíano (2018-03-27). "How to Altar the World: Amalia Mesa-Bains's Art Shifts the Way We See Art History". ARTnews. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
  3. Mesa-Bains, Amalia (Fall 1999). "Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache". Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. 24: 157–167 – via IngentaConnect.
  4. Ruíz, 452
  5. Kristin G. Congdon and Kara Kelley Hallmark (2002). Artists from Latin American Cultures: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Press. pp. 181–183.
  6. Ceremony of spirit : nature and memory in contemporary Latino art. Mesa-Bains, Amalia., Mexican Museum. San Francisco: Mexican Museum. 1993. ISBN 1880508028. OCLC 28888755.CS1 maint: others (link)
  7. 30th Anniversary Gala Benefit Celebrating 30 Years of Advancing Women's Leadership in the Visual Arts. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. 2011. p. 40.
  8. Diversity in the classroom : a casebook for teachers and teacher educators. Shulman, Judith., Mesa-Bains, Amalia. Hillsdale, N.J.: Published collaboratively by Research for Better Schools and Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1993. ISBN 0805814280. OCLC 28256756.CS1 maint: others (link)
  9. "An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  10. 1958-, Yorba, Jonathan (2001). Arte latino : treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Smithsonian American Art Museum. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications. ISBN 0823003213. OCLC 45618200.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  11. Smithsonian American Art Museum (2014-01-17), Our America Audio Podcast - Amalia Mesa-Bains, "An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio", retrieved 2018-09-08
  • Mesa-Bains, Amalia (Fall 1999). "Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache." Aztlán: Journal of Chicano Studies Vol. 24 No.2: 157-167.
  • Ruíz, Vicki; Virginia Sánchez Korrol (2006). Latinas in the United States: a historical encyclopedia. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-34681-9.
  • Telgen, Diane; Jim Kamp (1993). Notable Hispanic American women. ISBN 0-8103-7578-8.

Further reading
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