What is Chicana/o/x art? Does Ruben Salazar’s bluntly stated notion of a “Chicano” suggest an answer? “A Chicano [Chicana or Chicanx] is a Mexican-American with a non-Anglo image of himself [herself or themselves]” (Los Angeles Times, 1970). Chicano, Chicana, and Chicanx identities crystalized during the Chicano Movement (1965-1980), which witnessed the rise of collective mobilizations to improve the labor conditions, education, housing, health, and civil rights for Mexican Americans. From its inception, the Chicano Movement attracted artists who created a new aesthetic and framework for producing art, but they did not merely illustrate the social and civil rights movement by creating posters and flyers. Artists theorized, negotiated, proposed, and initiated new ethics, aesthetics, and ways of thinking that supported self-determination, hope, social critique, solidarity, and justice. Increasingly since the 1980s, Chicanas and Chicanx artists renegotiated this social justice contract. Chicana/o/x art continues to inform Mexican American cultural production and the nation’s cultural heritage. Social intervention, empowerment, and institutional critique remain some of the most important innovations of American artists, Chicana/o/x artists among them.
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