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In 2001, Azul Luna founded Las ViejaesKandalosas, a collective of artists with a mission to denounce the murdering of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico through art. Her first exhibit called EsesKandalo in 2001, took place at Self Help Graphics & Art in East Los Angeles. In February of the following year photographer Azul along with filmmaker Lorena Mendez-Quiroga led a caravan from Los Angeles to Ciudad Juarez to an invitational protest exhibit and press conference that they had curated at the INBA (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) Museum. Passengers in one car were artists Raul Baltazar, Victoria Delgadillo, Erica Elizondo and Rigo Maldonado. El Paso Times award winning reporter and Co-producer of this event, Diana Washington Valdez was the key speaker at INBA. Victim mothers and wives of alleged perpetrators gave testimonies.

In 2002, as a resolve from the INBA protest and community dialogue, Rigo Maldonado and Victoria Delgadillo co-curated the first internationally acknowledged exhibit on these femicides at SPARC- the Social & Public Resource Center in Venice Beach. This exhibit was called Las Hijas de Juarez and included 45 major visual and performance artists from Los Angeles.

Read more about this curation in UCLA’s Aztlan Journal

At this time, details and images were not readily available due to a systematic local Mexican government cover-up. In addition to selecting artists for Las Hijas de Juarez, it was necessary for the curators to provide details, images and resources for each artist. Several trips to Ciudad Juarez and Rigo Maldonado’s arduous hours on American police websites began the thread of thousands of cases related to these murders. Due to a lack of information on these murders on the internet then, many of these victims were identified by Maldonado by death year, age, area and degree of brutality.

Before they began curating Las Hijas de Juarez, Rigo Maldonado and Victoria Delgadillo created a strategy as to how art could be used in a human rights crisis. Victoria believes in the power of words and therefore did not want the language for the Las Hijas de Juarez to compartmentalize what was occurring as solely a Mexican matter. What was happening in Ciudad Juarez was a case of human rights and justice. Rigo did not want to assume the role of investigator or theorist on these disappearances. He wanted to invoke others in all walks-of-life to participate in this action.

Las Hijas de Juarez Images (2002). In addition to the visual artists featured below, the following artists/musicians/writers also participated in Las Hijas de Juarez: Monica Barriga, Max Blumenthal, Cecilia Brennan, Nikki Campbell, Erika Elizondo, Angela Flores, Xochi Flores, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Mike Ibarra, Shane Jordan, Angelica Loa, Frank Luis, Rocio Marron, Soraya Medina, Eddika Organista, Tianna Paschel, Minh Pham, Dominique Rodriquez, Aida Salazar, Raquel Salinas, Carolina Sarmiento, Carmen Vega and Brian Walsh.

“Art which memorializes and honors the dead women through a Day of the Dead celebration cannot simultaneously symbolise the brutality of these murders. Similarly, works which focus on bodily trauma and murder cannot effectively memorialize these lives. By examining the curatorial measures that were taken to organise the works by Delgadillo and Maldonado, I argued that Hijas de Juarez created a space in which the limitations of representation are exceeded through collective juxtaposition. The open dialogue of the works evoke the Juarez situation, and yet also heals, in a way that single interpretations, including political ones, never could. This is a unique function of art as I see it. ” – Lance Richardson, Writer/Journalist. In an interview with Victoria Delgadillo, Lance Richardson told her that his research on the activism for the disappeared women of Juarez through visual art, was the greatest amount of work world-wide created on one subject in the history of art.

August 5, 2020 – During the Covid 19 pandemic creating art was difficult, especially if your practice is based on community themes and engagement.  Performance Artist Dorian Wood came up with a great idea. Calling on friends to film him from inside their house, he created a beautifully pieced together musical film on longing and solitude.

Victoria Delgadillo was part this project, shooting her gate shutting on Dorian with a gust of wind.  Be warned, you may be tempted to google Dorian Wood to see his other stunning art projects.

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldua (1942-2004) is a major figure in many inter-disciplines, disciplinary areas of scholarship and art. She was born in the U.S., in the Rio Grande Valley at the border of Texas and Mexico into a family that had been in the U.S. for six generations, and died in Santa Cruz, California. Anzaldua contributed foundational works to Chicana/o/x cultural theory, feminist theory and queer theory. She is one of the first if not actually the first to construct queer theory within the academy in the 1980s. She co-edited the ground-breaking book on women and queers of color feminism, This Bridge Called My Back. Anzaldua is a major writer of literary essays, poetry, short stories and children’s books. Her illustrations have been the subject of art exhibits. Her most renowned sole-authored book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, has been translated into multiple languages and is currently being translated into French. It is a multi-genres book including auto-biography, auto-historia, auto-historia-teoria, political essays, literary musings, and poetry. In it, Anzaldua performs the process of decolonizing language by shifting from English (the main language of the book) into Tex-Mex Spanish and into Nahuatl, an indigenous language, to create what she called an infant language, this bastard language, Chicano Spanglish which is not approved by any society.

The Anzaldua Paris Symposium conference honors both the thirty year anniversary of Borderlands/La Frontera: La New Mestiza and its forthcoming translation into French. The main unifying thematic is the question of B/borders as conceptualized by Anzaldua, and its multiple situated potential interpretations and elaborations. For Anzaldua borderlands with a small b signals the geographical space of national division, such as the space of her birth at the U.S.-Mexico border. When she writes Borderlands with a capital B the concept-term signifies many other dimensions including psychic, sexual, spiritual, energetic divided spatialities as well. In sum, together the notions of borderlands and Borderlands up a world of possibilities for feminist and queer theory, literatures, historiographies, arts, which are invited to converge in this conference.

Goddesses and Monsters Online Exhibition with the Ladies’ Room. The Ladies’ Room will be hosting this online exhibition opening in June 2023! In addition to this virtual exhibit there will be virtual panel discussions and an exciting series of events connected to Goddesses and Monsters.  The Goddesses and Monsters exhibit will be installed in a local institution’s (TBA) brick-and-mortar gallery space with all the works seen virtually available in person. The Ladies’s Room staff will oversee sales of the artwork from The Goddesses and Monsters exhibit.  Please get updates here

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Nuestras Historias: Stories of Mexican Identity from the Permanent Collection is open year round.  Victoria Delgadillo’s painting of Laura Berenice, a disappeared young woman of Ciudad Juarez is in a permanent exhibit and museum collection at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. The permanent collection is in the Gilberto & Dolores Cardenas Gallery. If you are in Illinois, plan a visit at https://nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org/ . The National Museum of Mexican Art is located at 1852 West 19th Street, Chicago, IL 60608. 

Bolsa de Mercado prints are in these collections: Los Angeles County Museum Print Department, University of Notre Dame Latino Studies (Notre Dame, Indiana), UC Santa Barbara Library-California Multicultural Ethnic Print Archive (Santa Barbara, California), National Mexican Museum of Art (Chicago, Illinois), AltaMed Health Services Art Collection (Los Angeles, California), and Self Help Graphics & Art Archive (Los Angeles, California).

CALAFIA: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise, 2018

Know then, that due east of the Indies there is an island called California, very near to the locale called the Terrestrial Paradise. It was populated by Black Indigenous women, without men among them. They possessed strong and firm bodies of ardent courage and great strength. Their island was the strongest in all the world, with steep cliffs and rocky shores. Their arms were decorated with gold, as were the harnesses of the wild beasts they tamed and rode.– Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Las Sergas de Esplandián

Sepa entonces, que al este de las Indias hay una isla llamada California, muy cerca de la Localidad llamada el Paraíso Terrenal. Estaba habitada por mujeres negras, sin hombres entre ellas, pues vivían a la manera de las amazonas. Poseían cuerpos fuertes y firmes de ardiente valor y gran fuerza. Su isla era la más fuerte en todo el mundo, con acantilados escarpados y orillas rocosas. Sus brazos estaban decorados con oro, así como los arneses de las bestias salvajes que domaban y cabalgaban. – Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Las Sergas de Esplandián

It is the legend of Calafia, the indigenous Black warrior queen and ruler of the island named California, that brings us to this chapter of the MexiCali Biennial. Delving into the origin of the name “California,” this character and this landscape serve as this exhibition’s points of departure into the past and present mythologies that form the concept of California as a land with a shared history transcending both time and borders.

The word “California” first appears in the fifth book of Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s sixteenth-century opus Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), Which tells of a rich island, its powerful women, its mythical beasts, and its quest for greatness that sets the foundation for the mythos that continues today. At the same time, the novel and its inherent Christian agenda were used as a colonialist tool, an antithesis to the heroic Calafia.

CALAFIA: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise redraws California’s mythical shores from Oakland to Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, from Tijuana to Calexico to Mexicali, and other imagined lands far beyond. It features the work of thirty artists and collectives from diverse regions spanning the U.S.-Mexico border, with Queen Calafia as a source of inspiration. The subject matters reflect on erased, futuristic, and present-day stories of shared physical and/or metaphysical places. Such paradises are manifested and re-envisioned through critical themes that cover experiences of identity, race, and gender as they expand across this expansive territory—leading to a critical re-examination of the idea of California as both sanctuary and paradise, albeit for whom.

Through video, painting, sound, installation, sculpture, film, audio, cartography, and photography, stories of displacement, labor, migration, man-made borders, and questionable neoliberal economic policies are shared between the works, articulating an ideologically decolonized perspective. Ancient cultures, the land, relationships to feminine forms, and the rituals of urban and rural landscapes demonstrate confrontational, postcolonial praxis. CALAFIA is an exhibition that seeks the spirit and identity of California as drawn by the trajectories of its people.

Entre Tinta y Lucha: 45 Years of Self Help Graphics & Art Exhibition on view at Fine Arts Gallery August 21 through September 29, 2018
A partnership between Cal State LA and Self Help Graphics & Art, with support from Cal State LA’s Fine Arts Gallery

Lounge inspired by Wayne Healy’s 2002 print “Bolero Familiar”

Entre Tinta y Lucha celebrates the 45th anniversary of the East Los Angeles cultural and community art organization, Self Help Graphics & Art (SHG).  The exhibition looks back at over four decades of the organization’s artistic innovation and excellence, organizational resilience and expanded activity, by featuring a display of over fifty fine art prints from throughout the organization’s history. Inspired by the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s and the rise of printmaking as a legitimate art form during the same period, SHG was founded by Franciscan nun, Sister Karen Boccalero, and local Chicano artists Carlos Bueno, Antonio Ibanez, and Frank Hernandez in East Los Angeles. Since its incorporation in 1973, SHG has produced over 1,000 art print editions, including 54 Atelier projects and exhibitions all over the world. The organization remains dedicated to the production, interpretation and distribution of prints and other art media by Chicana/o and Latinx artists; and its multidisciplinary, intergenerational programs promote artistic excellence and empower community by providing access to working space, tools, training and beyond. Click here to see prints by Victoria Delgadillo and Dalila Mendez selected for this this exhibit representing the women printers of Self Help Graphics.

The exhibition also looks forward to an exciting evolution of Chicana/o and Latinx aesthetics. Undeniably, Self Help Graphics & Art has continued to represent the heart of the Chicano Art Movement in Los Angeles. Before major art institutions began exploring community engagement in the arts, SHG understood the power of art to affect change in our communities and that this shared experience defined how people from diverse backgrounds related to each other through their creative practices. Now, nearly a half century later, SHG continues to foster emerging Chicana/o and Latinx artists through its world-class printmaking studio and supports the role of artists as leaders, both within its organization and the community. A series of artist-led panels from the perspective of SHG’s print studio will accompany the exhibition to get perspective from the artists themselves about the history and value of the organization to the community and the greater Los Angeles art world. 

On Thursday, September 27, 2018 at CalState LA:

Panel Discussion on “Las Maestras”
6-7:15pm  | FREE
Victoria Delgadillo (Moderator)
Yreina Cervantez, Barbara Carrasco, Dalila Mendez, and Judy Baca

Artists will discuss the barriers and opportunities that female printmakers encountered in working in the screen print studio at SHG and the significant role that they played in shaping the program and organization.  In addition, after the panel discussion tour the gallery with a Maestra to view their print in this exhibit.

Gallery images on 9/27/18

Entre Tinta y Lucha marks a historic collaboration between Self Help Graphics & Art and Cal State LA–two community institutions with roots in the Eastside of Los Angeles. The exhibition, panel discussions and workshop hosted at Cal State LA’s Fine Arts Gallery are curated by university faculty members Michelle Lopez, MA/MFA and Victor Hugo Viesca, PhD., in partnership with Self Help Graphics & Art. 

The exhibition is FREE and open to Cal State LA students and the public beginning August 21, 2018- September 29, 2018. The Fine Arts Gallery is located at Cal State LA’s main campus and is open Monday-Friday, 12pm-5pm. The gallery will be open extended hours, 6pm-9pm, during exhibition programming on Thursdays: September 6, September 13, and September 27, 2018.

The MexiCali Biennial 2018/2019. Raul Baltazar a trans-disciplinarian artist and Victoria Delgadillo filmmaker, fine art printer and organizer premiered their film “Califas”  at the MexiCali Biennial 2018/2019. Colonialism has never ceased and thus we have mashed-up time in our film, not as something that occurred in the past but rather revealing the threads that expose our current position in California, our need for resistance and our participation in this clash/ cataclysm of cultures. Scroll below to view the complete version of  “Califas.”  After the credits, check out some out takes.

Lysa Flores prepares for her scene with Raul Baltazar.

“CALAFIA: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise,” exhibit opening: Thursday, October 4, 2018, running through December 15, 2018  at Robert & Frances Fullerton Museum of Art, as part of the MexiCali Biennial exhibit.  “CALAFIA: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise,” included work by US & Mexican artists. Read a write up from TERREMOTO/Contemporary Art in the Americas Magazine here.  They liked our film!! (Although it seems as if the author Arden Decker was moved by the images in our film, the sound quality in the exhibit was not the best.  Much of the language was in Spanish and the story line was moved by the music and the words, as well as the images.  Still, we are glad to have been featured in the article!)  www.mexicalibiennial.org/ #LysaFlores #EndyBernal #RamonGarcia #ReinaPrado  Read more on this exhibit through the MexiCali Biennial

CALIFASULTA2018 from Victoria Delgadillo on Vimeo.

Victoria Delgadillo’s painting of Laura Berenice (above), a disappeared young women of Ciudad Juarez (found in Lote Bravo irrigation ditch with 7 other murdered women, 2002) is in the inauguration exhibit of a new 1363 square foot gallery, Galeri­a Gilberto & Dolores Cardenas, National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 West 19th Street, Chicago, IL 60608. 

Nuestras Historias (Our Histories) highlights the Museum’s Permanent Collection to showcase the dynamic and diverse stories of Mexican identity in North America. The exhibition presents cultural identity as something that continually evolves across time, regions, and communities, rather than as a static, unchanging entity, and features ancient Mesoamerican and colonial artifacts, modern Mexican art, folk art, and contemporary works from both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. The vast diversity of Mexican identities demonstrated in these works defies the notion of one linear history and a singular identity. Curated by Cesareo Moreno.  Read more here

Home to one of the country’s largest Mexican art collections, the National Museum of Mexican Art features more than 7,000 seminal pieces from ancient Mexico to the present. Guests will be immersed in the rich culture and immaculate art pieces that span 3,000 years of creativity. Many of the museum’s pieces and exhibitions have traveled to other institutions around the world, showcasing the quality of the collections. The museum is always free and open to the public. Check their website for times and days.

Memories of Migration: Telling our Stories & Connecting our Journeys

Dates: July 3 – August 31, 2017 at Paulina June & George Pollak Library, California State University, Fullerton.  September 15 – October 15, 2017 at The Anaheim Public Library.
Curators: David Lopez, Barbara Miller, Irma Morales, Brenda Ramirez, and Saidy Valdez

Description:  This project chronicled the migration stories of migrants in the Orange County area. While primarily focusing on Latino history, the project collected hundreds of migration stories from individuals from all walks of life to demonstrate that migration is a universal part of the human condition. The exhibit was a collection of various media from artists throughout the country exploring the theme of migration through their own medium interpretation.

Victoria Delgadillo screened her film bawrder 2009 (border) in this exhibit  View it here

On August 11, 2017, This artistic documentation was launched at Pollak Library CSUF with an all-day conference geared towards librarians, historians, academics, students, artists and community members who wanted to learn more about the migration stories of their local and global people. The conference and art exhibit was open to the public and library users.

Locations:  Paulina June & George Pollak Library, California State University, Fullerton, 800 North State College Blvd., Fullerton CA 92834-4150 & The Anaheim Public Library (APL), 500 W. Broadway,  Anaheim, CA  92805.

Press to read MORE

April 1 to 11, 2017
Gregorio Escalante Gallery La Bodega Gallery and Zack de la Rocha Gallery
In collaboration, is pleased to announce
“Los Four Meets Los 40”

Location: La Bodega Gallery, a few blocks from the historic Chicano Park in Logan Heights/San Diego

Los Four Meets Los 40 is a group exhibition of contemporary Chicano influenced artists who continue to pave their independent paths while also honoring a legacy spearheaded by Los Four.  In 1969, a group of Mexican-American artists – Frank Romero, Carlos Almaraz, Roberto de la Rocha and Gilbert Magu Lujan – became the art collective known as Los Four. They went on to participate in a ground-breaking LACMA exhibition in 1974. After the LACMA exhibition, Judithe Hernandez joined and made the collective a party of five. The dedication of Los Four ushered in a new era for Mexican-American artists as they raised an intellectual vanguard and furthered the visibility of the Chicano community.

Los 4 Meet Los 40 aimed to pay tribute to the original four while featuring forty additional artists working in a similar vein. Art lovers were invited to witness the dynamic of today’s contemporary and stimulating art, inspired by the direction of Los Four. Contemporary Chicanx artists utilize the same vibrant and passionate color pallet to depict the old neighborhoods and faces of the community. The aerosol, which was utilized in the 1974 Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition, remains part of the Chicano aesthetic; yet, spray painting has matured in scope and breadth. New narratives are executed with and without the rattle of the spray can. Others continue to fill the many nuances of the Chicanx identity with purpose. The story only grows, from national and cultural amalgamation to LGBTQ voices. Present-day Chicano artists advance the conversation with imagery analogous to the work of Los Four.

Cesar Chavez once said – We need to help teachers and parents cherish and preserve the ethnic and cultural diversity that nourishes and strengthens our community and our nation.

The new Chicanx artists will carry the torch into the future as we renew our commitment to our cultural legacy of richness and diversity. This moment of celebration is continuous.

Exhibiting Artists include:
Los Four: Carlos Almaraz, Roberto de la Rocha, Gilbert Magu Lugan and Frank Romero
Los 40: Abel Alejandre, Antonio Pelayo, Barbara Carrasco, Block, Bonnie Lambert, Brian M. Viveros, Chaz Bojorquez, Checho Perez, CiCi Segura Gonzalez, CR Stecyk, Daniel Gonzalez, Eriberto Oriol, Eric Almanza, Gregg Stone, Gustavo Rimada, Jaime Guerrero, Jose Lozano, Leigh Salgado, Libre, Linda Arreola, Linda Vallejo, Man One, Margaret Garcia, Mario Ybarra Jr., Nacho Chincoya, Oscar Castillo, Pavel Acevedo, Rafael Cardenas, Richard Salcido, Robert Palacios, Roy Gonzalez, Ruben Esparza, Sandy Rodriguez, Saner, Shizu Saldamando, Sonia Romero, Surge, The Beast Brothers, Victoria Delgadillo and Yreina D. Cervantez

This exhibition that was inspired by a conversation between Juxtapoz co-founder Greg Escalante and Rage Against the Machine Zack de la Rocha, curated by Joshua Ben Paskowitz and Abel Alejandre.

Contact Information:
Chris Zertuche
La Bodega Gallery
http://www.labodegagallery.com
2196 Logan Ave. San Diego, CA

CHICANO DREAM at the Museum d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France

DATES: Friday, June 27, 2014 & Sunday, October 26, 2014

This is how it goes . . . much of the art exhibited here was part of the Cheech Marin art collection.  However, due to the space and presenting a more complete view of what a Chicano Dream is, art from the collection of Self Help Graphics & Art in East Los Angeles was added. That’s how I made the cut! 

A card stock paper skull designed by Daniel Gonzalez and assembled/decorated in red duct tape by me (Victoria Delgadillo)  was part of this Chicano Dream exhibit. Over the skull’s mouth is written “desaparecidas” –  for the disappeared woman of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. This red skull is from the collection of Self Help Graphics & Art and is part of the yearly Day of the Dead programming. (Note: I found these images on a The Aquitaine Museum’s feature page regarding what the Chicano Dream exhibit was offering–click the read more link below. No notation of my name as the artist, but nice to see that the themes of women’s lives and the crimes against females world-wide is critical in France too. )

Read more

Musee d’Aquitaine
20 Cours Pasteur
33000 Bordeaux
Tel: 05 56 01 51 00

On November 13, 2016, The Fine Arts Complex in Arizona had protesters at their exhibit This Machine Kills _____, related to post-election drama. On November 14, 2016 the artists were told that the exhibit would come down, due to threats against the gallery.  Read the details here from the one of the curators, April Lilliard-Gomez.

by Robbie Conal

December 2, 2016  Fine Art Complex 1101 announced via that “This Machine Kills ________” would remain on view through December 10 as planned.

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November 1 to December 10, 2016, This Machine Kills _____ curated by Ed Gomez, April Lillard-Gomez and Luis G. Hernandez seeks to explore the relationship between art, music and politics during a volatile election cycle. Featuring artists from Arizona, California and Mexico, the exhibition utilizes the historically significant function of protest art as an opposition to technologically prolific forms of media. Most works will consist of propaganda style posters and prints, though there will be several types of media represented. Topics such as election fraud, terrorism, political corruption, economic insecurities, xenophobia and civil rights issues among many others will be explored in an artistic interpretation. The title of the show directly references American folk legend Woody Guthrie’s iconic guitar emblem “This Machine Kills Fascists” itself a protest piece reflecting the musician’s political views. This Machine Kills _____takes place at the Fine Art Complex, 1101 West University Dr. Unit #103, Tempe, Az 85281.

Below is my poster for This Machine Kills . . . . a critique on the media its title is “La Prensa”.

La Prensa by Victoria Delgadillo

Trump Bully Culprit by Robbie Conal.

Phoenix New Times (11/7/16) : “For more than a year now, the national conversation has been dominated by talk of presidential politics. Several artists have been inspired by candidates including Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. Others have addressed hot topics on the political landscape, such as civil rights, immigration, and reproductive rights. Here’s a look back at more than 50 artworks we spotted on the metro Phoenix arts scene during the most recent election cycle — all with a political or social justice twist.”

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