Chicana artist Amalia Mesa-Bains room-sized art installations recall everything from memories to atrocities. They incorporate hundreds of found items like photos, clothing, rosaries, and more.
The publication Art News described the impact of her work in the art world as the “Age of Amalia.”
Mesa-Bain’s work is now the center of her first traveling retrospective exhibit, Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory.
It has been shown in California, Arizona, and New York, and now makes a stop at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
The four-part series, Venus Envy, showcases the personal and feminist perspective of Mesa-Bains, with work dating back to the 1970s.
Chapter 1 of Venus Envy, titled Of the First Holy Communion Moments Before the End, features dressers, rosaries, dresses, and photos of Mesa-Bains’ own first communion.
She explained the title of the installation.
“It seemed to me to capture the intensity of the ephemeral,” she said. “I tried to think about how I might illuminate my own sense of living, what were those moments, and the first childhood memory that lasts for me has always been my first Holy Communion.”
Another Venus Envy chapter in the retrospective — Chihuatlampa: The Place of the Giant Women — is a nod to the Aztec figure known as Cihuateotl.
It represents the women who died while giving birth. They escort the sun through the underworld to rise in the east.
“All my life (I was) big, not maternal enough, all of the things that make you a non-woman,” Mesa-Bains said. “I thought, ‘Well, then I'm just going to make a story about it.’ Picking the woman who dies in childbirth seemed quite ironic and amusing to me.”
Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory is on display at the San Antonio Museum of Art through Jan. 12.
