Judy Baca

Judith Francisca "Judy" Baca (born September 20, 1946) is a Chicana muralist, activist, and educator best known for directing the Great Wall of Los Angeles, which was the largest known communal mural project in the world as of 2018. Painted along the Tujunga Wash in the San Fernando Valley, the mural depicts the history of California through the experiences of people of color often left out of history books, including the Dust Bowl migration, the internment of Japanese Americans, Zoot Suit Riots, and the Freedom Rides. Baca designed it from interviews with residents and consultations with historians, and painted the first phase with more than 400 young people, artists, and scholars over seven summers from 1976 to 1984; many of the youth were referred to the project by the justice system.

Baca co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, in 1976, and the Great Wall was its first project. She is SPARC's artistic director and professor emerita of Chicana/o studies and world arts and cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Biography

Early life

Baca was born in Watts, Los Angeles on September 20, 1946, to Mexican American parents. Her military father never knew of her existence and moved back to the east coast after her birth. In her early life in Watts, she was raised in a predominately Black and Latino area. She lived in an all-female household composed of her mother, her aunts Rita and Delia, and her grandmother Francisca. Her grandmother was an herbal healer and practiced curandera, which profoundly influenced her sense of indigenous Chicano culture.

Baca's mother later married Clarence Ferrari in 1952, and the three of them moved to Pacoima, Los Angeles. Pacoima was drastically different from Watts – Mexican-Americans were minorities in Pacoima. Baca has a half-brother Gary and half-sister Diane.

Education

Baca was not allowed to speak Spanish in elementary school, as it was prohibited, but she did not know English very well. Her teacher would tell her to go paint in the corner while the other children studied. After some time, Baca started getting better in classes once she was able to understand the textbooks. With the encouragement of her art teacher, she began drawing and painting. She later graduated from Bishop Alemany High School in 1964.

She then attended California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and earned her bachelor's degree in 1969 and a master's degree in fine art in 1979. Judy was the first Baca to attend college, and actually quit for a brief period of time after becoming tired of being poor. She sought out a job in production illustration and worked there until she was inspired to go back to college and get a Bachelors of Fine Art. While there, she learned and studied modern abstract art. She wanted to make art that was accessible beyond the constraints of the gallery and the museum. She wanted to make art for the people she loved, but she knew that they didn't go to galleries. "I thought to myself, if I get my work into galleries, who will go there? People in my family hadn't ever been to a gallery in their entire lives. My neighbors never went to galleries...And it didn't make sense to me at the time to put art behind some guarded wall." After completing graduate school, Baca continued her education, studying muralism at La Tallera in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Works of art

Las Vistas Nuevas

In the summer of 1970, Baca decided to create a mural in Boyle Heights in order to bring community together. In the first team she had twenty members from four different gangs, and the group decided on the name Las Vistas Nuevas ("New Views"). The mural they would create would show images that would be familiar to the Mexican-Americans who were living in the neighborhood. "I want to use public space to create a public voice for, and a public consciousness about people who are, in fact, the majority of the population but who are not represented in any visual way.

Raspados Mojados

In Raspados Mojados Baca used a street vendor cart as a sculptural installation to address immigration issues and the misrepresentations of Mexicans living in the United States. Los Angeles street vendors constantly sell ice cream as well as Mexican snacks, fruit cocktails, corn on the cob, and raspados. This has brought attention to Los Angeles and has attempted to pass pushcarts loitering laws into any city. At the front of the cart a painting of a Mexican man captioned “illegal alien, undocumented worker” which is the main focus of the painting presented on the cart. On one side of the cart there is a painting of a man who is being dragged across a fence representing the Mexican/us border to the U.S. It is labeled Bracero Wars or also known as the Mexican Farm Labor Program. Bracero is a Spanish term meaning "manual laborer" or "one who works using his arms.”

The Bracero Program started on August 4, 1942, when many growers feared that World War II would bring labor shortages to low-paying agricultural jobs. That is when the idea of bringing Mexicans legally to help with those shortages. Mexicans signed contracts to come to the U.S. legally only to work farm jobs where needed. They were given free housing, meals at reasonable prices, insurance provided by the employer's expense, and free transportation back to Mexico at the end of their contract. They were only allowed to hire immigrants where shortages were existing but rules were not followed. Growers benefited from hungry working Mexicans from their cheap labor.

Next to that painting, there is one with Mexicans at their farm jobs, with painting or tattoos on their back, as well as one with the LA skyscrapers while women sweep and work. The tattoos show their heritage and backgrounds as well as how they have been mistreated by the U.S. and what it was like crossing with many other Mexican immigrants to help support their families.

Las Tres Marías

In 1976 Baca created an installation piece of an upholstered triptych that displays two identities of femininity in Chicana culture: La Pachuca and La Chola. These archetypes are on opposite sides, separated by a mirror in the center. Baca created this art installation as a way to bring attention to the different forms of identity expressed when one looks in the mirror.

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「Judy Baca」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。