Curators of the exhibit, Rio Yañez, son of Yolanda M. López, and archivist Angelica Rodriguez, collaborate to showcase the artist's impactful work. (Ken Crawford)
It wouldn't be unimaginable to think the Yolanda López show at the Cheech is a group show. From the sheer size of the collection to the diversity of techniques and materials, the solo exhibit takes up a lot of space, being both aesthetically varied and physically large. The whole second floor of the museum is dedicated to her work, from large-scale portraits in both paint and charcoal to street photography and political flyers.
Yolanda M. López was born in 1942 in San Diego. After completing high school, she moved to San Francisco, where she attended college and became active in the social movements that swept the Bay Area in the 1960s. Yolanda López played an important role in creating the aesthetic of the Chicano cultural movement of the 1970s and 80s. Along with creating some of the most recognizable and celebrated works of the era, she is also considered important in the feminization of the movement. Those two elements, femininity and Chicano identity, sit plainly at the forefront of what she did, creating the lens by which to view her work.
She returned to San Diego in the 1970s to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts at San Diego State and eventually her Masters degree at UC San Diego.
Yolanda's series of running paintings are the only works in the exhibition that exist within a recognizable space. They portray her running around La Jolla and the UC San Diego campus. The Geisel Library is featured prominently in one of the larger paintings.
Most of her work, however, contains no landscape or backdrop. She instead emphasizes the subject. In some of her grandest work, 8-foot depictions of herself, her grandmother, and her mother in charcoal pencil tower over the observer. The drawings are simple, but the scale gives the women portrayed a sense of power and dignity. They are elegant but not extravagant.
Another series portrays working Latina women as the Virgin of Guadalupe, Possibly the most powerful symbol of feminine power within Latino culture. It's a reminder that Mary was not rich or powerful in her time either, much like the women portrayed in López's work.
One of the most powerful images as well as one of the most technically excellent is a portrayal of her mother in a green and blue house dress against a blank wall. It evokes the best of Gauguin, Van Gogh and even the early, more representational work of Picasso.
Yolanda López returned to San Francisco in the late seventies when a bolder and more radical Chicano movement took hold. Her work became more political and didactic. Technical mastery took a backseat to message, and she began working on posters, flyers, and DIY zines as media.
"So she was in her mid-thirties, and at the time when a lot of that work was being made, it was, you know, it was like 1978, 79, 80, 81. And that was kind of the earliest days of Xerox art. But it was also, especially in San Francisco, kind of the tail end of the psychedelic era of San Francisco psychedelia was coming up against New Wave aesthetics." Says Yañez. "I think if you're looking at the Xeroxes of her and me, and we're just literally pressed on the bed of the Xerox machine."
It was also around this time that she began using photography to capture a new expression of Chicano aesthetics with her images of West Coast Cholo culture. Her stark black-and-white images are gritty and should be regarded alongside those of Merrick Morton and Glen E. Friedman, who are doing seminal work in street photography.
Yolanda López's body of work is incredible. While her methods and media may be diverse, she was able to capture the sense of empowerment. The power of the subject and of herself. Yolanda's work is emblematic of what I see as the ultimate value of The Cheech. There is dignity in being spoken to in your own language. In this case, it is not just verbal language but representing familiar aesthetic themes. To see yourself and your family and your cultural experiences represented as something beautiful is validating. It gives worth to your experience. The respect she gives her subject matter, whether it be a political poster or her grandmother, is loudly communicated to the observer.
The Yolanda López exhibition is at the Cheech through January 26th. Please go see it while it is here. This is the first time many of these pieces have been displayed to the public, and I get the sense that the importance of what Yolanda López did as an artist and activist has been further recognized as a result of the Cheech exhibition. You can get more information about the exhibition, the Cheech, and other Riverside Art Museum exhibitions here.
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