Juventino Aranda
Born to Mexican immigrants in Walla Walla, WA, Juventino Aranda’s search for self-identity informs his process as it relates to the social, political, and economic struggles of Chicanos. His art and activist practices are influenced by the grassroots movements of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, as well as the formal and conceptual strategies of post-minimalist artists. From the street to the gallery, he is an archeologist, historian, and architect to a shifting Chicano community, engaging current political debates and notions of the American dream.
Aranda’s recent work draws on his family history and particularities of his childhood that speak to broader cultural themes. The mass-produced art his mother purchased but never removed from its corrugated cardboard protectors, for instance, appear in Aranda’s work as subtle markers of social aspiration and personal economies of value. For his exhibition at the Frye Art Museum—Aranda’s first in a museum setting—the artist will continue this line of inquiry and present a new body of work that explores the ways in which common objects and imported products become emblems of dual cultural identity.
Juventino Aranda. Lay Me Down in a Bed of Roses (When I’m Gone) (detail), 2016. Oxford Pima Cotton Woven Shirting, Mouliné Stranded Cotton, Ash Frame. Photo: Tara J Graves.
The exhibition will include sculptural and wall-hung works that are created through a variety of technical processes to communicate the essence of Aranda’s (re)appropriated source material, which spans from Golden books and Pendleton blankets to panaderia calendars and loteria cards. Using shifts in scale and context to estrange and magnify the significance of these objects, Aranda explores the subtle ways in which ideology is communicated through—and belief systems form around—seemingly mundane aspects of the material world.
Frye Art Museum
704 Terry Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98104
USA
Juventino Aranda. We Shall Meet in the Place Where There is No Darkness (Jaguar), 2016. Bronze, black cotton velveteen, Mouliné stranded cotton, corrugated cardboard frame. Photo: Tara J Graves.