L.A. Xicano Exhibitions Opening Soon

Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo, the first of CSRC’s L.A. Xicano exhibitions, opens Sunday, September 25, at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Since the late 1960s, Oscar Castillo has documented the Chicano community in Los Angeles, from major political events to cultural practices to the work of muralists and painters. This exhibition will present rarely seen photographs from 1969-1980 exploring major themes (social movement, cultural heritage, urban environment, and everyday barrio life) and approaches (photojournalism, portraiture, art photography) that have guided Castillo’s work. Complementing the concurrent exhibition on Chicano art groups, Mapping Another L.A., the exhibition will provide another level of contextualization of L.A. history during this pivotal period. The exhibition will draw from an on-line digital archive of over 3,000 images by Castillo at the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) Library and a forthcoming book on Castillo through the CSRC series The Chicano Archives.