I first found out about Laura Aguilar, a Chicana lesbian photographer from California's San Gabriel valley who lived from 1959 to 2018, because I was searching for historical photos of Butch, Latina lesbians. I google searched something, and Laura's 1992 photo series at a working-class lesbian bar in East LA called the Plush Pony was the first thing that came up. Obsessed, I looked through all the photos I could find of hers on the internet - giving visibility to the queer people in her life, exploring our Mexican American culture and identity through a queer lens, posing her nude body in self-portraits taken amongst rocks and desert plants.
Fascinated with her photos, I searched for information about her life. I wanted to know, in Laura's own words, what her work meant to her. But it seemed like all I could find were people's academic articles about her work. I read all that I could find my hands on, and I learned about her life: she was dyslexic, and struggled to communicate in writing, which is part of how she found photography. Photography helped her in navigating the world as a queer Chicana with a disability and through struggles with mental health.
Something about these articles felt off. They had these in-depth analyses of her work that seemed distant in some way from the photos themselves, from the people in these photos. I started to wonder who was writing about her art in this way and questioned why they were having these analyses of her work. Though I had no way of knowing this for sure, some of the information seemed inaccurate to me, or like they were assuming or projecting things about her life.
I wondered how she would feel about her work being analyzed in this way. What did she believe? How did she think? I clung to the few quotes that came directly from her that I could find in articles, some referencing letters that are a part of her archive at the Latino Studies Center at UCLA. I contacted the archive, but they never emailed me back. I wished I could go in person, read her letters, and writings, and connect with her myself, but I wasn't able to make it to LA in time before this project ended.
Through the small glimpses of her writings and words, I tried to imagine how she might feel about all this. In a way it felt hypocritical. One of her later photos series talks about access - in the photos, she holds up a cardboard sign with a handwritten definition of the word "access." Sybil Venegas, a curator of her work and co-executor of her estate after her death, said, “She was so out front with these issues in her work with her body and her identity that people just couldn’t deal with it. I think the world caught up to Laura.” While Laura's photographs are being revered by arts institutions and academics as foundational, at the time of making this work, her artistic exploration of her identities, experiences in the world, and her body, wasn't being accepted or appreciated in the same way. The same institutions Laura had criticized seemed to be the ones analyzing her work and holding it up now, but in doing so, removing that access from people to read her own thoughts about her work.
Feeling disillusioned with academia, and being unable to access many of her writings directly, I relied on my own interpretation and understanding of her work, based on my shared identities with Laura as a Lesbian Mexican-American artist. I think I understand access. These are the conversations I have with my friends as Latinx artists, trying to navigate sharing our art in the world within these fucked up institutional spaces, and creating our own paths instead. I get the Plush Pony, Latina Lesbians, adding to the visibility and importance of highlighting the multitudes of personalities, experiences, and stories within our communities.
And I think I understand the nature self portraits. The desert is my home, where my ancestors come from, and part of my family's identity as self-proclaimed "desert rats." In this print I portray my desert - the rocks, sotol, the agave, the lechuguilla, the ocotillo - plants native to Chihuahua. I based it off my favorite one of Laura's nature self portraits. Her expression, her openness in body language, the scene around her all made me feel understood and safe. I later read in an article that the portrait was taken in the desert in New Mexico, not far from the desert I know. I read that it was her favorite portrait of herself. Reading these things strengthened the connection that I already felt to her work, and I wanted to honor the path Laura set for my Latina Lesbian community by recreating her self portrait through my own experience.
@lagrimaya
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I'm Maya, an artist from California and Texas. Participating in QAP for the first time in 2019 was my introduction to visual art and launched a passion for printmaking, which has grown into a drive to find more ways to make printmaking and other art forms accessible to artists of all ages. Along with 5 of my friends, I took part in creating Colectiva Libre, a collective that offers free art workshops to the community and encourages people to create as a form of political and self-expression.
In addition to queer ancestry, I also use art to explore my connection to queerness through my Mexican American culture and family’s homelands in the Chihuahuan desert border region. Aside from linocut printmaking, I've also explored risograph, spray paint, murals, photography, archival work, and wheat pasting. @lagrimaya
