Latina/o Art:
Gender and Art

Gender Roles in Latino Art

            Art has been around for as long as anyone can remember.  Sculptures and rock paintings date back over 40,000 years.  Throughout the years, art has been a key ingredient in the formula for successful communication.  Native Americans painted on cave walls to inform others of animals in the area and hunting techniques.  Artists during the Renaissance used their works to communicate religious ideologies.  The communication ability of a piece of art is summed up in the familiar Chinese proverb that states, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  Artwork is a form of creative expression able to elicit multiple responses from its viewers and is an excellent medium to communicate messages to audiences.  In recent years, Latino artists have been creating works to inform, inspire, and communicate personal opinions to members of their communities.
            An issue which developed in the 20th century, for the Latino community, and continues today is the issue of gender roles. Many artists want to develop pieces which will invite viewers to consider their place in relation to gender and culture.  The artwork is fashioned to create an emotional response in the viewer and to allow him or her to think about gendered social spaces.  Contemporary artists desire to create pieces which are “real” and relevant to today’s issues.   Questions arise in the community, such as: how does gender, and specifically machismo, shape male and female roles in the community; in the family?  How has society’s concept of traditional gender roles shaped relationships between men and women?  What is the father’s role, compared to the mother’s when raising children?  Artists develop products which attempt to answer these questions and communicate to their community how they feel individually about the issues.  Some of the works are physical and emotional displays of masculinity, while others emphasis femininity and the struggle for social equality among Latino women. 
            Much of Latino artwork is created to change the community's perception of traditional gender roles.  Feminist artists are particularly interested in using their art to develop awareness of the traditional roles of women and to bring the community together to gain power.  They attempt to be viewed as social equals to men.  Many pieces center on changing the idea of “La Familia de Raza,” which places the female of the family in a supporting role, as opposed to a leader.
            Numerous different forms of artwork are used (such as painting, sculpture, poetry, film, and many varieties of performance art) to look at gender and personal power.  Ana Mendieta, a well known feminist artist, is famous for her performance art and video works which almost always contain a feminist political message 1.  Much of Mendieta’s work involves her posing nude to show the beauty of the female body.  According to Blake Gopnik, “Mendieta developed a kind of surrogate for her own presence, which she called a "silueta." It was a generic sign or icon of the supine female form, just legible as marking the contours of a human body…In some of her siluetas, the outline of her wide-hipped woman's body gets so reduced, it's just a kind of narrow almond shape: It's woman as vagina, the thing that marks her off most clearly from the men who've ruled in art until now” 2.  Other Mendieta pieces are created in a way to appear more macho.  She develops these pieces to increase the female presence in the world.  Her artwork tells other females that it is okay to be strong and to develop traditionally male characteristics such as high confidence and strong egos. 


Ana Mendieta. "Iamgen de Yagul."

            Nao Bustamante is another Latino who uses the performing arts as a way to express her views on gender roles and identity.  In a 1992 act entitled “Burrito Piece,” the San Francisco Chronicle stated that, “[Bustamante] strapped on a burrito and invited white male members of the audience to come up onstage and take a bite out of it to exorcise their guilt from 500 years of oppression” 3.  This form of art by Bustamante is very visible to a number of people and communicates to the community that male dominance is a thing of the past and should no longer be socially acceptable.
            Luis Alfaro won the MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1997 for his work as a gifted professional and community leader.  Alfaro is also a performance artist who challenges contemporary views on sexual orientation and gender 4.   
            Other Latino artists use paintings and murals to portray their views on gender roles.  Judith Baca uses murals as a way to educate her community about gender roles.  In an Associated Press article, a well-known Baca mural is described:  “Baca's "Las Tres Marias (The Three Marias)," created in 1976, surrounds a mirror with portraits of a young Chicana and Baca herself, creating a provocative reinterpretation of the three Marys of the Crucifixion that invites viewers to consider their place in relation to ethnicity, gender, religion and culture” 5.  Baca’s pieces are good examples of identity politics in art and use portraits of individuals to make arguments about one’s gender identity.


Judith Baca. "Las Tres Marias."

             Pepon Osorio uses video and other forms of media to express his views on gender roles in the Latino community.  In an installment entitled “En la Barberia, No Se Llora,” Osorio recalled that a boy’s first journey to the barbershop is one of the first steps in becoming a man, because nothing feminine is allowed in a barbershop.  Tiffany Lopez, a writer for the Art Journal, gives her evaluation of Osorio’s piece: “Osorio decided to create an installation that would use the culturally specific and gendered space of the barbershop to explore the construction of Latino masculinity, machismo” 6.  This project was not only an expression of gender roles, but also a good community building tool, as Osorio allowed many men of the community to be featured in the video and interviewed older men about how machismo has shaped their lives. 
            Laura Molina is a more recent Latina artist who explores gender roles in her artwork.  She gives this statement for why she paints, “As an educated, native-born, English-speaking, fifth generation Mexican-American and a feminist, there is almost no reflection of me in the movies or television, which is almost as bad as being stereotyped. My paintings make my own statement…By becoming the stereotype I also break it, because as the artist I have control of the image and what conveys to the viewer” 7.


Molina's "La Novia (waiting for my love)"

           Art is a great way to develop ideas and express ones creative opinions to the community.  Gender roles are a key theme often explored by many artists.  The role of gender is a contemporary issue in Latino culture and often controversial.  The artists who create gender related pieces do so because they want to communicate to others how they feel about certain issues and sometimes to indicate how their gender identity has been shaped by social norms.