As someone who has experienced a nontraditional educational and professional journey, I strongly connected with Latina lesbian activist Laura Esquivel as I processed her collection of papers at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC).
The Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2020 to support “Religion, Spirituality, and Faith in Mexican American Social History, 1940s–Present,” a project for the reprocessing, rehousing, and digitization of nine of the CSRC’s collections. Each of these collections contains a significant component of materials related to religious or spiritual belief that were collected by a person or an organization with a long history in Los Angeles and a deep commitment to religion and/or spirituality. As a research and archive assistant at CSRC, I was appointed to work on one of these nine collections, The Josefa L. Serna Papers.
As I entered through the front doors of the Los Angeles Convention Center for this year’s installment of the LA Art Show (LAAS), I already knew something special was about to happen. Each participating gallery space was set up with its own booth and its best and brightest works were proudly hanging on the walls. The event hosted a broad range of art styles. I could, for example, turn one way and see a display of brightly colored pop art, then another to see a booth filled with Renaissance-style portraits. The commercial event had something for everyone to enjoy. My favorite section, however, lay just behind the digital floor-to-ceiling waterfall installation by Luciana Abait. For just a few steps beyond it was this year’s DIVERSEartLA program: a segment of LAAS that included art from across the globe and highlighted women and nonbinary artists whose practice intersects with art, science, and technology. Here is where the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center’s (CSRC) exhibition Immersive Distancing: Carmen Argote and Zeynep Abes, curated by Chon A. Noriega, resided for the weekend.
A sneak-peek interview with artists Carmen Argote and Zeynep Abes in anticipation of the upcoming LA Art Show DIVERSEartLA exhibition, “Immersive Distancing: Carmen Argote and Zeynep Abes.”
Gabriela Rodriguez-Gomez discusses her research into three CSRC collections: the Nancy Tovar Murals of East L.A. Collection and the CARA (Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation) Records, Parts I and II. Rodriguez-Gomez, a Chicana artist and PhD candidate in Chicana/o studies at UCLA, used the research for the completion of her master’s thesis. Her work was supported in part by a CSRC research grant, with funds provided through the Institute of American Cultures.
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