SAN ANTONIO — The time period “rasquachismo” describes a Chicanx aesthetics through which the banal is remodeled into baroque exuberance by means of playful wit, as conceived by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto in 1989. Rasquachismo: 35 years of a Chicano Sensibility on the McNay Museum illustrates this conceptual framework — a working-class perspective with a “rough-and-tumble slapdash vitality” — by means of works drawn from the museum’s everlasting assortment.
The exhibition makes its case most efficiently with artworks made within the current. In Einar and Jamex de la Torre’s “Mi Chicano Corazon” (2023) on the middle of the principle gallery, for example, a big glass and resin coronary heart studded with amber plastic jewels rises out of a automotive wheel spewing arteries that bloom into nopales. In Antonio Lechuga’s “Fence Section #3” (2021), cobijas, or fleece blankets, bear pop patterns of snarling tigers, the Virgin of Guadalupe, or voluptuous roses. However they’re wrapped round rhomboid scaffolding that means chain-link fencing, invoking the United States-Mexico border and attendant notions of commerce, tariffs, and deportations.
Set up view of Einar de la Torre and Jamex de la Torre, “Mi Chicano Corazon” (2023), glass and resin with discovered objects
Within the second gallery, barely older works embody the high-low hybrid of rasquachismo. Ruth Buentello’s “Last Supper” (2017) depicts a South Texas household eating on pizza, a wink at Leonardo da Vinci’s Italian origins; a small copy of his unique hangs on the wall beside household pictures. And Juan de Dios Mora’s “Salimos Rachimiendo (We Left Squeaking)” (2012) is a sci-fi linocut print imagining low-rider-style spacecrafts made with automotive engines, wheel rims, aircraft propellers, and different discarded mechanical components. Tactfully embellished with stickers and antennas, these DIY contraptions fly excessive in opposition to the backdrop of house, with only a peek of the earth under.
A following part introduces domesticana, a Chicana counterpart to rasquachismo as theorized by Amalia Mesa-Bains that championed emancipation by way of activism and schooling. Accordingly, Yolanda López’s poster, “Jaguar Woman Warrior” (1999) is devoted to 2 neighborhood activist docs, Sandra Hernandez and Nilda Alverio. The work, nonetheless, showcases a lady wearing a jaguar tlahuiztli, or Aztec warfare swimsuit, and accompanied by Laelia orchids, utilized by the Aztecs for ceremonies and drugs. This work, nonetheless, is troublesome to characterize as rasquache, because the evocation of Mesoamerican historical past doesn’t essentially relate to the “irreverent survivalist” mentality of rasquachismo, which emphasizes the artful utilization of restricted sources.
Making use of rasquachismo to older Chicanx artworks can be difficult. The work most incongruous with the theme is Luis A. Jiménez’s “Fiesta (Diptych)” (1985), which depicts a conventional Mexican couple’s dance referred to as Jarabe Tapatío in opposition to a banner declaring “Fiesta.” Not all people artwork will be rasquachismo, or all sense of historical past would collapse underneath its irreverent banner. Working example, making use of the idea to Jiménez’s earnest “Fiesta” threatens to flatten the dance right into a mockery. As César Martínez, a Chicano artist who didn’t take part within the present, writes within the exhibition reader, “[t]hose who use the term ‘rasquache’ need to be more discerning about whom or what they apply it to.” This exhibition brings out the complexity of those distinctions.
Antonio Lechuga, “Fence Section #3” (2021), cobija (fleece blanket) and foam
Juan de Dios Mora, “Salimos Rechinando (We Left Squeaking)” (2012), linocut
Yolanda López, “Jaguar Woman Warrior” from Lady’s Work is By no means Performed (1999), screenprint
Luis A. Jiménez, Jr., “Fiesta (Diptych)” (1985) lithograph with glitter
Rasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility continues on the McNay Artwork Museum (6000 North New Braunfels Avenue, San Antonio, Texas) by means of March 30. The exhibition was curated by Mia Lopez.
