Printmakers have conspired, historically, to illustrate the maps created by European colonizers that were used to chart and claim their expanding territories. Over the last three decades, Latinx artists and print studios have reclaimed this printed art form for their own spatial discourse. This book examines the limited editions produced at four art studios around the US that span everything from sly critiques of Manifest Destiny to printed portraits of Dreamers in Texas.
Reclaiming the Americas is the visual history of Latinx printmaking in the US. Tatiana Reinoza employs a pan-ethnic comparative model for this interdisciplinary study of graphic art, drawing on art history, Latinx studies, and geography in her discussions. The book contests printmaking’s historical complicity in the logics of colonization and restores the art form and the lands it once illustrated to the Indigenous, migrant, mestiza/o, and Afro-descendant people of the Americas.
Reclaiming the AMericas: Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory
Order online via University of Texas Press or Amazon
“Reclaiming the Americas is exactly the book that is needed now as art history, art museums, and interdisciplinary scholarship "discover" Latinx art but rarely engage with the artwork itself, let alone the artists. Tatiana Reinoza turns to Latinx printmaking as a case study for a different approach, one that begins with the artists. In looking closely at artworks that critique the medium’s complicity in colonial and cognitive mapping, Reinoza challenges a simple resistance paradigm. The result is a complex genealogy for Latinx printmaking (and art) that is at once local, regional, national, transnational, and utterly heterogeneous in its affiliations, participants, and practices.”
~Chon Noriega, UCLA, coauthor of Home—So Different, So Appealing
“In this much-anticipated book Reinoza delivers the first art historical study of Latinx printmaking, one of the most significant yet unrecognized mediums in Latinx art. This necessary volume centers printmaking workshops as the key site of Latinx identity-making that they are, while offering a deep analysis of printmakers' aesthetic innovations in American art. This is a foundational study that will inspire students of art history and cultural studies across the Americas.”
~Arlene Dávila, NYU, author of Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, and Politics
“In Reclaiming the Americas, Tatiana Reinoza argues that decolonizing Latinx artists reclaimed printmaking from its original association with mapmaking and the associated “spatial logics of colonization” linked to charting and space-claiming. In an act of singular scholarly curation, Reinoza identifies four organizing approaches, or “territorialities,” in the work of printmakers in the US Southwest and along both its coasts, to home in on unifying decolonial gestures borne of shared training and to illuminate the value of “Latinx art” as a category of analysis. Reclaiming the Americas is a masterful book, deeply researched and written with clarity, on contemporary printmaking and specifically Latinx printmaking, and it is sure to impact scholars, readers, and teachers of art history as well as American and cultural studies more broadly.”
~Leticia Alvarado, Brown University, author of Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production
Self Help Graphics at Fifty celebrates the ongoing legacy of an institution that has had profound aesthetic, economic, and political impact on the formation of Chicanx and Latinx art in the United States.
Officially launched in 1973 during the Chicano Movement, Self Help Graphics & Art continues to serve on the cultural front. The institution’s commitment to art, dignity for all, and empowerment of Chicanx and Latinx artists appears in every aspect of programming, including the Día de los Muertos festival; the Barrio Mobile Art Studio, which brings art education to underserved schools; and the printmaking program, which offers an accessible medium infused with activist aims. Looking at the multiple genealogies of art that intersect in East Los Angeles, Self Help Graphics at Fifty bears witness to the organization’s influential role in US and global art histories.
Self Help Graphics at Fifty: A Cornerstone of Latinx Art and Collaborative Artmaking
Order online via University of California Press or Amazon
"It is a pleasure to see a scholarly anthology dedicated to the legendary Self Help Graphics & Art printmaking workshop. Highlighting the individuals, neighborhoods, and institutions who kept it thriving for decades, this thoroughly researched social history of art offers readers a refreshing view of art-centered community making, emphasizing cross-cultural, feminist, and queer perspectives."—Jennifer A. Gonzalez, UCSC, coeditor of Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology
"An amazing collection of insightful essays on the critical role played by Self Help Graphics & Art over its fifty-year history in creating and nurturing an artistic community in East Los Angeles. By explaining the origins; networks of support; reach of art education; feminist, queer, and Central American collaborations; and reach of its art around the world, the editors have established the centrality of this institution of creativity and experimentation."—George J. Sánchez, USC, author of Boyle Heights: How a Los Angeles Neighborhood Became the Future of American Democracy