Previous Library Exhibition
Chican@s (re)Imagining Zapata
Chican@s (re)Imagining Zapata examines the iconography of Emiliano Zapata, the famous revolutionary general, in prints, posters, and newspapers produced from the 1940s through 2011. Drawing exclusively from collections at the CSRC, student curator Julia Fernandez compares prints made in Mexico City in the 1940s and 1950s at El Taller de Gráfica Popular with illustrations in issues of El Malcriado, the United Farm Workers newspaper, from the 1960s and 1970s, and with posters and prints created by Chicano artists in the 1960s, 1970s, and 2011. The exhibition reveals how iconic images of Zapata and other heroes of the Mexican Revolution were used to inspire Chicana/os to imagine their own social and political revolution in the United States. Although many of the works in Chican@s (re)Imagining Zapata quote familiar depictions of militant leaders, one poster, featuring a young woman draped in bandoliers, questions the role that the masculine imagery had for Chicanas as well as Chicanos during the rise of the Chicano Movement.