Assimilation Battles and Other Cultural Conflicts

Assimilation Battle
Oil on canvas, 2000, 48" x 72"

With this painting's narrative I was working on bringing together different aspects of the conflicts between Chicanos and native-born Mexicans that take place here in San Bernardino every day. This painting is describing the assimilation battles that we go through in our never ending quest to fleshout the definition of what home or homeland really means. This battle is internal and external, and we can accept the battling of cultures or try to work and resolve some of the differences. As Chicanos, Latinos, or Mexicanos we understand the battle, while the larger Anglo majority still places us all together in the same category of cultural character, not realizing that we are so different from one another. But whatever side you may claim, we all have different descriptions of this battle depending on where we come from or live on this battlefield map of the southwestern United States. I have used the vehicle of Early Renaissance painting and narrative style to describe my concepts about this assimilation battle. I have used the monochromatic underpainting and oil glazing techniques of Renaissance artists in this painting as a way of art historically connecting to the past, but I use contemporary imagery as the narrative. This is important to me and to my latest artwork. As a contemporary Chicano artist I have felt a need to reject the past 500 years of painting and art history in an attempt to recover a little of what was lost of my native indigenous soul clouded by years of Eurocentric American art education. So I have been working with old painting techniques as a way of bringing a different evolution of art and culture of my work. What if an early Renaissance artist like Fra Angelico had magically arrived in Tenochtitlan seventy years before Cortez did, what would the Mexicas' art have looked like when Cortez arrived? This is what I am working with as an artist; I am working with aspects of art history and visual metaphors in my work, rearranging art theories and history in different ways to create new work. My use of painting and digital images in installations combined with these ideas is what I think of as my Chicano conceptual artwork. The painting Assimilation Battle is heroic looking–it is painted as a history piece might be, but there are also humorous overtones. There are many visual metaphors throughout the painting that deal with assimilation and culture, some are Chicano and some are Mexicano. What the general American population fails to recognize is that Chicanos and native-born Mexicans can be very different people who sometimes don't get along with each other. There are battles every day between the old immigrants and newer ones. Cultural battles change the shape of the community and the faces of the people who live in then. Here in San Bernardino I experience these battles, at school and out in the community, and I think it is an important subject for Chicano artists to address. I have thought about assimilation in my work for many years, but this painting expresses my thoughts in a way that leaves room for