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Los pobres comen tan rico: surviving together
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Los pobres comen tan rico: surviving together
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Content
Copyright 2020 Dulce Soledad Ibarra
Los Pobres Comen Tan Rico: Surviving Together
By
Dulce Soledad Ibarra
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(FINE ARTS)
August 2020
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Each day working with members of my varying communities has been a gift of itself.
Through them, I learn, laugh, and prosper. I dedicate the efforts of this thesis paper and project
to all of them.
To my large and loving family; Mago, Chava, Lola, Chato, Beto, Lupe, Ceci, and Adan: I
carry our doubled last name, our facial features (la más cara máscara de feos), our love and
support, our work ethic, our humor, and our humility with me always. To the wondrous, tiny
woman that cared for me and my family, Josefina “Chepita” Ibarra: aunque vivo sin tus abrazos,
sigo con las bendiciones que me dejaste. Aquí en el cuarto amarillo, yo también sigo siendo tu
cosita.
To the faculty and staff at USC; Nao Bustamante, Patty Chang, Annette Kim, Andy
Campbell, Juan Carlos Morales, and so many others: each of you have instilled incredible
confidence and validation of my work as a person, an artist, a thinker, and a leader. To my
peers at USC and beyond; particularly Ana Briz, Johnny Forever, Casey Kauffmann, Paulson Lee,
noé olivas, and Joseph Daniel Valencia: these two years have been both exhausting and
wonderful. The home we were able to build at this campus is now mobile—it is whenever we
are together; in person, in spirit, on FaceTime.
A special thanks to USC’s Race, Art, and Placemaking (RAP) for extending some funds for
this thesis. I have enjoyed the experience of working close to the individuals of an organization
that is so perfectly aligned to my values.
Thank you.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………ii
LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………iv
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………..…………v
I. MI GENTE: 9TH TO OLYMPIC…………………………………………………………………….…………………………...1
II. SURVIVING AS UN POBRE………………………………………………………………………………..………………..….4
III. A GAPING BRIDGE: FINDING A STREET DETOUR………………………………………………………………….10
IV. HOW TO FALL BACK…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13
V. CAMINO DE CAMBIOS: CHANGE IS INEVITABLE…….................................................................18
VI. MAKING ROOM………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…20
VII. JUNTOS: A PRACTICE OF TOGETHERNESS…………………………………………………………………………..22
VIII. BRING CASH………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...….24
IX. UNCERTAINTY MAXIMIZED: AN ECONOMIC UPDATE…………………………………………………………..26
FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…29
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...36
iv
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 The decorated sidewalk of the Piñata District. October 5, 2019, photo by
Dulce Soledad Ibarra………………………………………………………………………………….…….29
Figure 2 Bolsote (Wearable 2), bolsas de mercado, thread, and buttons, Dulce
Soledad Ibarra, 2019. Photo by Ethan R. Tate.………………………………………………….30
Figure 3 Black fence at the Underground Museum with a sign that reads, “Attention
Graffiti Artists. Please don’t write on our walls. We can sell your work.”
October 2018, Photo by Dulce Soledad Ibarra………………………………………………..…31
Figure 4 The first post created from Marciano Art Foundation Union Instagram
page, posted on November 1, 2019. Screen-grabbed on March 6, 2020….…….…32
Figure 5 Creciendo (Para Yolanda), bolsa de mercado, thread, wood, Dulce Soledad
Ibarra, 2019………………………………………………………………………………………………………33
Figure 6 The closed and graffitied warehouse doors of Candy House Party Supply.
April 1, 2020, by Dulce Soledad Ibarra…………………………………………………….……..…34
Figure 7 A sketch for Sobrevivientes, in collaboration with Carrusel Party Supplies,
April 2020. ‘Sobrevivientes’ is Spanish for ‘survivors’……………………………………..…35
v
ABSTRACT
The Los Angeles Piñata District is a regional landmark colored with culture, art, community,
and Latinx (primarily Mexican) migrant methods of survival. My initial fascination with the
district has since developed into a deeper relationship and/or commitment to the laborers
there, creating a sustained exchange of conversations and commerce across time. Using local
art institutions and alternative art spaces as examples for space- and placemaking, I analyze
institutional failed and successful responses to and interaction with community while
simultaneously thinking about the existing site of the Piñata District as an environment of equal
cultural importance.
The resiliency of laborers and small business owners is tested daily, and the implications
COVID-19 have only maximized the need for adaptable and sustainable praxis. In a time of
uncertain change and transition, this thesis project utilizes artistic community engagement as a
means to radically organize and collaborate within a fixed capitalistic system that
disproportionally affects working-class, migrant folk.
1
I. MI GENTE: 9TH TO OLYMPIC
Starting from Towne Avenue to Central Avenue, as 9th Street transitions into Olympic
Boulevard, is a row of small but colorful businesses. Windowless warehouses used as
storefronts haven’t always been the most appealing method of business, but problem solving
runs rapid in this community. The sidewalks act as another form of display that windows could
never compete with. Store owners and street vendors work and blend together. There are
piñatas shaped as children’s current favorite characters, traditional pointed piñatas, and cake-
like tiered piñatas with transparent centers that hold soft plastic, toy balls; serape textiles
found as table runners and the lining for sombreros, bags, and apparel; bolsas del mercado in
various colors schemes and sizes that I initially gravitate towards. Colorful, traditionally
decorated ceramic mugs, vases, and calaveras; party supplies like streamers, metallic fringed
curtains, hand-assembled recuerdos [party favors] for birthdays, quinceañeras, weddings, and
baptisms; food vendors grilling meat, quesadillas, pupusas, with stations of agua frescas with
extra pulp in abundance [Fig. 1]. The description of the space created is better met in person
than in writing, but this is a mere start. There’s a mixed review of the name, but vendors know
this street as the Piñata District, realtors and city planners alike know it as the Toy District, and
some locals called it the Party Supply District. Whatever the formal name, the weight of the
cultural importance of this area has overwhelmed me.
There’s something about celebration; not just in material but in the full experience of
crowds, color, music, food, various voices from storefront workers and street vendors shouting
“¡Pásale, pásale! Éntrale, éntrale!” [Come in, come in! Enter, enter!]. But this experience is just
2
at first glance. While I am still in love with the movement of the area, the honeymoon phase
has depleted after spending some time there. The impending survival of the merchants
becomes more and more urgent. Side by side, selling similar objects at similar prices, the
community is competitive with one another; they have to be. Yet at the same time, they
function together—they know each other.
I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for at Yolanda’s store La Mexicanita En L.A. Party
Supply, but she gave me the name and direction of a store that had stocks of bolsas de
mercado—a medium I have become attached to in my practice. Still, I stood with her for a
minute to talk while purchasing a vase I let her choose for me. I asked if her store makes their
piñatas in-house and she replied that most of them are imports from México but that the cake-
like piñatas are all done by the workers here. I asked her where she’s from and she said she was
from a small pueblo in the state of Guanajuato. We bonded over this as I let her know that my
family hails from that same state. I asked her about the business, and she mentioned that she’s
fairly new to the area and has a much smaller store than the neighboring storefronts but has
still managed to stay active in sales. I asked about her store’s demographic and she responded,
“¡pues, mi gente!” [well, my people].
Latinx (but mainly Mexican) imagery to sell, to buy, to share, becomes reflected in my
practice. It’s all deconstruction, reconstruction, reiterations. This cyclical notion of surviving
through your own community has fully fueled my interest in this street, of these people, of mi
gente.
Weekly trips for shopping, browsing, conversing has been a steady habit of mine.
Enamored by the details of display, of objecthood, of cultural reinforcement, and daily
3
reminders of how to hustle and survive, I begin to focus on this transitional moment between
my art practice and the block of merchants and their cultural significance. In ways that aren’t
always obvious to me or to others, I feel completely akin to the community and the space and
businesses they have all created. There is an initial gravitational pull to the culturally charged
objects that are so familiar to me and my upbringing. The people that occupy the merchant
stalls are makers and hustlers—just like me—that is where the relationship finds itself.
However, acknowledging the differences between myself and the folks that occupy space in this
district is just as integral as discussing alignment.
As a physical manifestation, my thesis project 9th to Olympic utilizes the existing space
of the party supply district. The hustle and bustle of this block is nothing like a gallery. The
space is fully active on its own, without the integration of artworks. Everything about this
district is a spectacle and completely distracting in visuals, noises, and energy. Initially, I
believed 9th to Olympic could be this all-encompassing thesis project where I worked as
someone who could facilitate and collaborate on art-making and programming in a location not
seen as an art space. I hoped to encourage the workers and vendors there to have a hand in the
making of my thesis. But I relearned about the failures of a hypothesis, and how to work with
failure as a way to provide a different trajectory in thinking about a project.
4
II. SURVIVING AS UN POBRE
Being part of a large, working-class, migrant family, the choice to pursue art as a
practice, as part of a career, as the academic source of debt, has never been met with spiritual
ease in my own soul. Chasing academia, in general, feels bittersweet. Of course, my parents,
though not fully invested in what I learn or do, have always supported my pursuits. This is
accepted by them despite their lack of hope in higher education changing the narrative of
generations of economic disenfranchisement. A 2001 study found that “...Latino parents are
said to develop low aspirations and expectations for their children because of ambivalent
attitudes about the benefits of formal education”.
1
This attitude was imposed on my father very
early on in his life, and perhaps because we stopped living in a government home and were
able to purchase property of our own, my father encouraged me to continue schooling. I am in
the group of siblings that graduated high school, and in the smaller group that went to college,
and one of two that is pursuing or has pursued a graduate degree. The separation between my
beginnings and my present and/or future has generated an immense amount of guilt and
anxiety. Compounding this guilt is my queerness and the uncertainty that I’ll be producing
future, more successful generations. And yet the same separation is perceived as a positive in
my immediate family. For my family, these educational steps I am taking are measurements of
success in survival.
This notion presents as factors of survival, which teeter between how moments of
survival can be both seen as failures and successes. According to the 2017 U.S. census:
1
Claude Goldenberg, Ronald Gallimore, Leslie Reese, and Helen Garnier, “Cause or Effect? A Longitudinal Study of
Immigrant Latino Parents' Aspirations and Expectations, and Their Children's School Performance,” American
Educational Research Journal (2001), 584.
5
“Mexicans are the largest population of Hispanic origin living in the United States, accounting
for 62% of the U.S. Hispanic population in 2017”.
2
Among those U.S. Mexicans, about 31% are
foreign (Mexican-) born, meaning that there is still a high percentage of Mexican parents and
children that are immigrants, and this is of course excluding the folks that are undocumented
and therefore unlikely to be recorded in the census count.
3
Focusing on two generations of
Mexican-U.S. population (immigrant parent and child), survival begins at migration. The success
of this initial action is in crossing over and being able to stay over and find work, either through
legalities or through precaution of existence with an undocumented status.
4
After job stability
via the options in undesirable fields of labor (usually involving physical labor, being underpaid,
and in the service or maintenance industry), Latinx immigrants work to provide housing and
daily pan or tortilla. The failure of this action of survival can be found in leaving families behind
in one’s country of origin, and the inability or rarity to visit.
5
Trauma produced through
migration and isolation is common along first-generation immigrants, and that trauma carries
onto their children.
6
What is the failure and success of surviving academia? The success is in the degrees I
have and will achieve, and a higher possibility of retaining a career via aforementioned degrees.
The failure in my studies is the English-only education I have received, thus the inability to have
a proper conversation about my studies to my family (that gap would still exist, as it exists with
2
Luis Noe-Bustamante, Antonio Flores and Sono Shah, “Facts on Hispanics of Mexican origin in the United States,
2017,” Pew Research Center, Sept 2019.
3
Ibid.
4
Beth Martin, “EXPERIENCES OF FAMILY SEPARATION FOR ADULTS WHO IMMIGRATE ALONE: Lessons for Social
Work Practice and Research,” Canadian Social Work Review, 2017, 255.
5
Ibid, 254.
6
Celia Jaes Falicov, Latino Families in Therapy, Second Edition, Guilford Publications (2017), 43.
6
my English-speaking siblings). Instead of thinking about the debt that I have accumulated
through education and my lack of monetary contribution to my immediate family, I try to
reflect on the future that may prosper in my degrees and career experiences and aspirations.
Regardless, the complexity remains, and I continue to investigate why and navigate through the
how.
There is a large culture of guilt in Latinx households, some of which is due to Catholicism
being one of the leading faiths in Spanish-speaking nations of the Americas.
7
Perhaps my
mother is a prime example of pushing ideas of guilt in order to get things accomplished or to
prove a point of some sort: Andas de vaga porque ya no me quieres, ¿verdad? [You’re always
going out because you don’t love me anymore, huh?] We are taught that we were born sinners
and we need to do what we can to never be seen as such ever again. Another reason that has
been noticeable for myself and my peers—something that does not stray away from the
conversation of guilt—is the implications of what I have coined as Muy Muy culture. There is
this phrase that comes from Mexican-Spanish slang used for projecting feelings of insecurity
onto another’s success: se cree muy muy [a more direct translation would be “they think they
are very very”. The website Mexico Guru’s dictionary uses this phrase in a sentence:
Esmeralda ganó el concurso de matemáticas y también la de ciencias naturales de su
preparatoria y ahora se cree muy muy. [Esmeralda won the math contest and also the
natural sciences contest for her high school and now she thinks she’s hot shit.]
8
7
Falicov, Latino Families in Therapy, Second Edition, 47.
8
Mexico Guru, “Se Cree Muy Muy,” mexicoguru.com, 2018.
7
To avoid being framed as too much, extra, snobby, hoity-toity like Esmeralda, there leaves no
room for pride in successes. That phrase haunts many Latinx folk and remains discouraging to
be above and beyond. I believe that a lot of that compressed guilt and anxiety to succeed has
some correlation to the Latinx status on the wage gap measurement. According to Pew
Research Center, both U.S. Latinx men and women have the lowest wages between the studied
demographics.
9
It’s a conversation that many of my first-generation U.S. Latinx friends have:
could it be our own families that keep us down? Are we afraid of success? The
intergenerational guilt of surpassing family members, of before and to the side of a person,
produces a hesitation to move forward. To survive is one thing, but to prosper, and prosper
without guilt, is another task to tackle. In this type of atmosphere, success feels like I am
running too ahead of my family, as if I will leave them behind.
That guilt provided in an upbringing of Catholicism and primos and tíos that love to give
eyerolls and label successful relatives as muy muy has a part in the way that I work, in my art
practice and in my daily life. When analyzed, this muy muy commentary has to do with a
separation of the self from the family or community at large. Transitioning from the scarring
notions of the muy muy to a structure for critical thinking, the focus of my practice is to provide
narratives that are traceable and familiar to my communities. There are a lot of things I don’t
know how to say in Spanish. All of my education has been in English, with small but insignificant
influences from Spanish Latinx media. In communicating to my family or found communities,
9
Eileen Patten, “Racial, gender wage gaps persist in U.S. despite some progress”, Pew Research Center, July 2018.
It is important to note that while this research breaks down wage gaps by demographics, the low wage findings for
the U.S. Latinx population does not take account of the varying demographic of U.S. Latinx folk, i.e. white, brown
and indigenous, and black Latinx-identified peoples.
8
the materials used in my work become the language-crossing words that are manipulated to
read as phrases, paragraphs, and stories. There is space for varying layers of conversation—
they say art is subjective—but overall, I keep in mind the access to personal but shared
narratives. My communities become part of my audience, with reserved seating.
Between the yuppies, present and former hippies, weirdos, and odd amounts of
prestige through historical understandings of western art, I don’t find any less conflict in
capitalism in the arts. There is a strangeness to the economy that artists are participants in. Like
anything and everything, it cannot be compressed into any set of binaries, however, most days
it feels like the question remains in the action to participate in the art market or outside of it.
10
How is it possible to survive outside of the art market? Do artists have to teach; do artists
pursue work in art institutions; do artists work for artists that participate in the art market; do
artists have to work outside of the field of art? Whatever doors open up in art employment and
opportunity that I continue to pursue, the question of ethics and inclusivity dominates my
working-class, pobre U.S.-Mexican mind. For me, the immediate response to issues of injustice
has been to take action or elevate invisible labor in praxis. The dream has never been to be
collected by rich folk, the dream is to follow what brings joy and share it. And maybe
subconsciously the dream is to avoid being seen as muy muy.
There’s no movement in sitting with guilt or feeling limited in success. However, all of
these anxieties provide a path and mission; the intention of space for community and survival.
Trips and purchases offering an exchange in money and goods, as well as for conversation and
10
Leigh Claire La Berge, Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art,
Duke University Press (2019), 10.
9
connections. The value is placed on the engagement, but it is never without some small
gestures of survival—such as buying a vase, a cup, a bag, a piñata. These were the careful steps
to making sure that I was a constant, and if permitted, that I could belong to the community
and create a togetherness that could be muy muy, without the negative connotation. To just be
extra special.
10
III. A GAPING BRIDGE: FINDING A STREET DETOUR
Creating opportunities for collaboration is an important intention of practicing as a
community-focused artist. That unification can come with more difficulties than some culture
creators would expect, namely me. As I managed to push my way into an art practice and
institutionalized sphere through the years, I have understood the tension between the arts
community I am blossoming with and the low-income community that I have belonged to most
of my life. Creating space that feels like it belongs to and holds no threat to marginalized folks
means it’s less of a social practice and more of a social commitment.
11
This friction has been hard to resolve here in Los Angeles, an arts and culture mecca
reflected in the various cities and districts of this large county. Viewing the disenfranchised
community’s past and still present animosity towards the arts community in New York, LA locals
can see a similar pattern of Los Angeles’ city planners and developers using art as a
“beautification” tool for displaying residents.
12
Movements like Defend Boyle Heights were a
result of the influx of commercial gallery spaces surrounding the area and bringing in art
enthusiasts into a low-income neighborhood.
13
But this new group of folks were not just
visitors, they became more permanent residents, investing in homes and apartments in Boyle
Heights. With these new residents, landlords and business entrepreneurs saw the chance to
introduce hipper aesthetics and higher prices. The cost of living went up and up, and long-term
residents resisted.
11
Cecilie Sachs Olsen, Socially Engaged Art and the Neoliberal City, Routledge (2019), 20.
12
Brentin Mock, “Where Gentrification is an Emergency, and Where It’s Not”, City Lab, April 2019.
13
Carolina Miranda, “The Art Gallery Exodus from Boyle Heights and Why More Anti-gentrification Battles Loom
on the Horizon,” Los Angeles Times, August 2018.
11
Acknowledging gentrification that is aided through the arts is the first step, creating
conversations about the inclusivity of community is the next, and the last step is real
consideration of artists and art institutions placement within the community. Harm reduction is
the key: is the X art institution unnecessarily taking up space in X area/community that does not
welcome it nor welcome X community? Why doesn’t X community feel welcomed or
considered? Is X community not being seen? Is X art institution not accessible? Navigating
through these types of questions helps encourage the faces of facilitation in the arts. It’s
complex, no matter the consideration.
Perhaps with the visibility of direct action protestors, the demand—or rather pressure—
for representation by the public seems to be finally getting through to institutions large and
small that have long lacked exhibitions and programming with the community in mind. How
would we reverse this idea of whiteness and white guilt being a large problem of the
institutional art spaces? I have no perfect solution to that (all apologies) but I do know that
there is no way to remove the history of the museum. We have to acknowledge museums as
western inventions.
14
However, despite this history, nothing is sustainable without change or
progress. And progress is the result of active listening.
I am seeking to find if there are models of art spaces that seem to work in the intense
political climate of museums versus their communities, and to point out the faults in the design
of large institutions and to acknowledge change that happens through, with, and about (art)
spaces. Working at art institutions (even as small as those spaces have been) has caused a large
14
Claire Farago, “What Are Museums For?”, Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, (Farnham, Ashgate
Publishing, 2004), 1.
12
migraine from the consistent avoidance of representation and inclusivity. As the pressure from
social change and exchange occurs, the voice of the public has helped in the reshaping the
museum complex. But in all honesty, it’s been more of a “you’re not sorry that you didn’t
include diversity in your programming, you’re sorry that you got caught (called out)” wave that
is happening. Because it is what I have been bred to know in my art education and institutional
employment experiences, 9th to Olympic honors Los Angeles-based art institutions as examples
of creation of spaces, campaigns of adjustments, failed and revived entities, community
engagement, and direct action.
This relationship with art institutions provides a web of varying ideas on sustainability
and durability, and my thesis reflects on sustainability in practice. Following that thread, I take
the material of bolsas as objects that can be used over and over again, and they carry the things
we need to survive in capitalism. Bolsas hold our goods; our needs and wants at purchase.
Bolsas embody a constant, the resource with a durable function. When I think about the
imports received from Mexico into these Los Angeles stores, I consider the migration and
navigation of these business owners, employees, and street vendors. I imagined what else
could be placed in these bolsas and how I could reshape their function. I started making hand-
stitched wearables of sorts that simultaneously represented durability and fragility [Fig. 2]. The
awkwardness of wearing bolsa clothing is an invitation to understand the material as an import
of armor that can fall apart and be rebuilt.
13
IV. HOW TO FALL BACK
For most critics of museums such as Homi Bhabha, the attempts of creating egalitarian
spaces that offer othered cultural visibility fall too short and end up being more self-defeating:
"the angle of visibility within the museum will not change."
15
My opinion is that we can learn
from our art space predecessors and continue mindful museum practices in newly established
spaces that are built with missions that function more contemporarily than what large
institutions have done; that they are built by or with folks whom are already affluent in radical
politics and are willing to be held accountable when their mission falters. If we want diversity,
we will first have to see it in the staff of the institution. But that doesn’t happen very often. In
fact, the problem-solving produced by museums tends to be less about staffing and more about
jumping on trends of inclusivity (I won’t elaborate on the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
initiative, but that’s one example). However, I am seeing the benefits of smaller, newer spaces
appearing.
I think a lot about the Museum of Contemporary Art and how its flop, in my
observation, has opened up doors for alternative art spaces to flourish. Founded in 1979, the
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) was established to build a contemporary art museum
and culture in the city of Los Angeles.
16
The flop, as I describe it, happened in 2008 when
Jeremy Strick had been the white director of MOCA since 1999.
17
He was a well-liked guy, in the
15
Homi Bhabha,“Postmodernism/Postcolonialism”, Critical Terms for Art History, (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 2010), 449.
16
“Mission and History”, Museum of Contemporary Art, https://www.moca.org/about/mission-and-history, (Nov.
2018).
17
Bob Colacello, “The City of Warring Angels”, Vanity Fair (Aug. 2010). This article is mainly about the Dennis
Hopper exhibition held at MOCA, but it goes in so deep with the drama that went down with the museum. It’s one
of the best finds I read during my obsession with the ‘fall’ of MOCA.
14
sense that he gave curators the freedom to be ambitious in their exhibitions. The thing Strick
wasn’t so cool about was money; apparently, he was just the worst about handling it. Of course
when the recession happened in 2008, shit hit the fan and the museum’s budget had majorly
surpassed their endowment. MOCA was on the brink of closure, filing for bankruptcy. However,
with Eli Broad on the board during that time, he stepped in to offer a matching agreement with
MOCA of $50,000, which the desperate museum took.
18
With that help, Strick was asked to step down, Jeffrey Deitch was made the new white
director (an odd move for the museum). Deitch was an art dealer, former art advisor for
Citibank and curator from New York. He was financially savvy with the arts, doing work in
commercial galleries, opening up his own Deitch Projects gallery where he paid special
attention to many street artists.
19
Likely because of that financing background, MOCA’s board
thought it’d be a good idea to hire him to superhero the museum’s reputation. However, he
was very controlling in terms of curating, dropping all planned exhibitions and planning and
producing his own (which were very successful).
20
That didn’t sit very well with white chief
curator Paul Schimmel. Arguments ensued which eventually led Broad to fire Schimmel. And
the firing of Schimmel angered the board of trustees of MOCA, especially the artists on said
board. They boycotted the museum and in general the community had not taken the firing of
Schimmel very well either. That made Deitch public enemy number one, and that public
resentment led to his resignation in 2013. And we see this trend at MOCA happen again and
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
15
again: they can’t keep a director or a chief curator. I’ll set aside the history of MOCA’s fall, I just
love art drama.
I believe it was one of the moments (and perhaps the recession as a whole) when
frustrated LA artists came to realize their own potential to hold space. With that, the
Underground Museum is one of these anomalies in the Los Angeles art scene. Opened in 2013,
this project was the manifestation of the late Noah Davis in association with MOCA.
21
But
before its connection with MOCA, which began in 2015, the Underground Museum was a
storefront, turned studio for Noah and Karon Davis, turned exhibiting art space.
22
Davis’
museum mission was to continue to curate contemporary exhibitions while also providing the
largely black and Latino neighborhood a space of resource and relaxation. On the outside, the
Underground Museum is simply unassuming; blending into its surrounding community so well
that it renders itself invisible. There are no large signs, no noticeable door entry; just a blacked
out storefront gate with a small poster that reads: “Attention graffiti artists: please don’t write
on our walls! We can sell your work!” with the museum’s email for contact [Fig. 3]. This
understated location is such a solid solution to the loudness, the interruption of neighborhoods
that most gallery spaces hold.
Being the nosy, annoying and eager visitor that I am, I always ask the employee working
the cashier at the bookstore what the demographic of visitors looks like. I get similar answers:
the majority of the visitors for the gallery are white, but the visitors of the programming are
overwhelmingly black. In one of my visits, the employee I spoke to let me know his account of
21
Diane Solway, “How the Family-Run Underground Museum Became One of L.A.’s Most Vital Cultural Forces”, W
Magazine (Nov. 8, 2017).
22
Ibid.
16
the demographic: at this point, the number of black visitors ties with the number white visitors,
a change that seemed to excite the employee and myself!
I distinctly remember my first visit to the Underground Museum, which was for the
exhibition Non-Fiction in the summer of 2016. I was very excited to see the show and finally be
in that space. I was immediately drawn to the demeanor of the museum Davis’ approach to
exhibition and programming. Later that summer, I attended “Holding Court” which was a Black
Lives Matter hosted event. The mass of supporters that showed up was incredible. I remember
there was a capping of people, but even if folks could not get into the museum space,
community members continued the event outside by creating a sort of rally. The energy of that
night was significant; guests honored the lives of those wronged by systematic racism and
unjust police brutality with meditation, chants, and short exercises. Though I got to meet folks
like the white curator Helen Molesworth through my co-worker (she was underwhelmed by my
presence), the attendance was mainly made up of black folks, the focal audience of the
Underground Museum.
As stated by the employee of the Underground Museum, the demographic for
programming always favors people of color. In terms of visitors, it’s not coincidental at all; staff
members of the museum actually go into the neighborhoods and personally invite the
neighboring folks to the events.
23
The relationship that has developed through these
interactions remains strong. And of course, all that programming is made with the neighbors in
mind; low-cost farmers’ market, free yoga and meditation sessions, free movie screenings, free
23
Justen Le Roy, interview, (October 2018).
17
lectures, free celebratory events, etc.
24
The model of this structure seems to provide a better
form for space occupancy; the space is fully shared, invitations are in person, the resources are
accessible. For an arts institution/organization, that is a rare find.
24
“Calendar,” The Underground Museum, https://theunderground-museum.org/Calendar, (Nov 2018).
18
V. CAMINO DE CAMBIOS: CHANGE IS INEVITABLE
Has this partnership with the Underground Museum been fruitful for MOCA? Perhaps.
Changes are well underway for the museum. In May of last year, MOCA announced that it
would discontinue admission charges at the start of the new year, a change made possible by a
$10-million gift from donor and president of the Board of Trustees Carolyn Powers, a gift
presented at the museum’s 40th birthday celebration.
25
The effects of this change will likely
have similar results to the Hammer Museum’s move to free admission in 2014, which saw
attendance go up 25% the first year.
26
For the Hammer, the admission fee is permanently
terminated, as they sold the hook: “Free for LA. Free for you. Free for good.”
27
For MOCA, free
admission is only secured for five years, but the hope is that the museum will find a solution to
stabilizing this change.
I asked my mother not too long ago about art viewing, but more specifically about her
level of comfortability in a museum. She said: “yo no voy a museos. Me cobran.” [I don’t go to
museums. They charged me.]
28
Will Margarita Ibarra, a migrant woman with a fifth-grade
education and not a lot of interest in the visual arts, make her way to one of the MOCA
locations now that there is no admissions fee? Definitely not, by her own accord. But if this
space’s programming or exhibitions matched her interests, I believe there would be no arm
pulling. This is to say that museums of the Los Angeles area are making attempts to address
25
Deborah Vankins, “MOCA receives a $10-million gift to make admission free,” Los Angeles Times, May 2019.
26
Deborah Vankins, “Free admission to MOCA starts Jan 11. Why the change isn’t as easy as it may seem,” Los
Angeles Times, Nov 2019.
27
“Free Museum Admission,” Hammer Museum Blog, Jan 2014.
28
Margarita Ibarra, interview, (Jan 2020).
19
communities they had trouble getting into their doors: the lower income and financially
insecure folks.
Free admission is just one of the ways that museums find small resolutions to create a
space of equity. And MOCA is not only showing interest in gestures for its expanding visitors,
but the museum has also started to make moves for its employees. On November 1st of 2019, a
movement ignited with the visitors service associates of the Marciano Art Foundation, two-
year-old, large, private museum started by brothers Paul and Maurice Marciano. It started with
an Instagram post captioned: “We the workers at the Marciano Art Foundation have filed to
unionize!” [Fig. 4] This group of museum employees were inspired by the actions of other
museum workers pushing, and in some cases, successfully granted union certification, such as
with the unions formed at the New Museum and the Museum of Tolerance.
29
But just days
after the organizers filed to unionize through the National Labor Relation Board, the Marciano
Art Foundation laid off all 70 employees and closed its doors, likely for good.
30
This outraged
museum employees throughout Los Angeles, and particularly inspired employees of MOCA to
go public with their plans to unionize on November 22, 2019.
31
Like the unions before it, the
MOCA Union addressed issues of wage, hours, and job security. Unlike the Marciano
Foundation, it took two weeks for MOCA to recognize the union of its employees and they
rolled into 2020 with adjustments that consider every angle of participants of the museum.
32
29
Catherine Wagley, “Museum Workers Across the Country Are Unionizing. Here’s What’s Driving a Movement
That’s Been Years in the Making,” Artnet News, 25 Nov 2019.
30
Kate Brown, “The Marciano Brothers Are Closing Their Huge Private Museum in Los Angeles Indefinitely as Staff
Fight to Unionize,” Artnet News, 7 Nov 2019.
31
MOCA Union, “WE JUST WENT PUBLIC!...” Instagram, 22 Nov 2019.
32
Caroline Elbaor, “LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art Swiftly Agrees to Recognize Its New Union as Museum
Workers Across the Country Continue to Organize,” Artnet News, 9 Dec 2019.
20
VI. MAKING ROOM(S)
Space- and placemaking has always been an interest of mine, even where it didn’t seem
like it applied. Unlike my parents, I never paid attention to Catholicism but I do recall a mass I
endured as a youth where the priest spoke about the church as a space. He raised a question to
that morning’s church-goers, “what is more important, the bible or the church?” Met with a
hesitant crowd, the few that attempted to answer nervously shouted: “the bible!” The priest
argued, “no, the church! How can we worship if we don’t have a place to lead it?” And that
always bothered me, because I never believed in the specificity of a space to control anything. It
is the people that create space, and that’s not always meant as a literal sentiment. Creating
space has a history of its own, and it is ever-present in art. Sometimes art spaces are founded
by millionaires who wear suits on holidays, and sometimes they are founded by groups of
people that have little resources but a lot of ambition. The Underground Museum came with a
mission that wasn’t provided by surrounding institutions—of opening up space for black
people, black artists, and black art but that welcomes all—and they sought out to be the space
they needed but didn’t have
33
. With Underground’s mission in mind, MOCA came to attempt to
honor and observe that mission as they took the museum under its entity.
Large art institutions are learning from small institutions but also are taking notes from
their fellow large art institutions. What is finally being understood by institutions is that
everyone—the community of its surroundings, the community of its visitors, and the
community of its employees—needs to be able to survive, otherwise they will cease to exist. It’s
33
Neda Ulaby, “He Died At 32, But A Young Artist Lives On In LA's Underground Museum,” NPR: All Things
Considered, August 2016.
21
a lesson for museums lead by community or with community in mind as well as filthy rich
collectors with museums: don’t fuck people over (my eyes are on you, the Broad).
Therein lies a task that is actually a lot harder to put into action than one would think.
But it’s the trials of effort that matter—it is what one can do with or learn from the errors. I
look at the way institutions function and remain with a critical eye because I am a full
participant of these spaces. And when I become a full participant of any space, I want my
participation to be welcomed and welcoming.
It’s not always easy to know if you are welcomed. I’m not as outgoing as I wish to be in,
so the build in becoming a familiar face was slow. But one day in November 2019, I walked in
Carrusel Party Supplies, and one of the workers there shouts “Hey! Our loyal customer!” I felt
like Norm from the sitcom Cheers, even though he didn’t say my name. From then on Joseph—
who is the son of the owner of the store and now a friend—and I shared more conversations
and have talked about my thesis. This made me more comfortable to finally show Yolanda from
La Mexicanita En L.A. Party Supply a piece I made for her [Fig. 5]. She smiled very lightly and
seriously, “Esto sí es muy especial” [this is very special]. She offered me deals for anything else I
wanted to buy, an exchange that cemented a welcoming.
22
VII. JUNTOS: A PRACTICE OF TOGETHERNESS
Many artists before and after have utilized unoccupied and occupied spaces for
collaboration, and many of the recent examples that I admire best are here in California, a bias I
acknowledge because of being from this state and its arts community. I consider the moment of
“a la calle,” created by Rafa Esparza and his artist collaborators in Los Angeles’ Santee Alley.
There was carefulness in this approach, not informing any media ahead of time, creating no
prior invitation for the event to the art public. As described by Ana Briz:
...in a la Calle, you saw toy dogs chillando, blinged out garments, quinceañera dresses,
Virgén motifs, red and blue demonions, and an abundance of Nike Cortez throughout.
Kiki Xtravaganza, of the legendary House of Xtravaganza, kicked-off the processional
performance with a vacuum-cleaning skit.... performance artist Sebastian Hernandez
served pan dulce to shoppers from a silver platter, paying homage to their parents’
labor as panadería owners.
34
The documentation of the popup performance looked fanciful, seeing the interaction between
performers and spectators in an embellished space such as Santee Alley, the very area that I
bought my quinceanera dress, with performers in outfits that only reiterated the magic of the
objects for sale. They were in a space that they have visited in the past, the way that my family
and I have numerous times.
It was a gesture of hypervisibility for the brown and queer participating performers.
Latinx-brown queer folk have a challenging time navigating through non-queer Latinx-brown
34
Ana Briz, “Freakshows, Spectacles, and Protests: Public Performance in Rafa Esparza’s a la Calle,” presented at
USC Annenberg - Critical Mediations Conference Panel: Subversive Histories of Performance Art, October 2019.
23
spaces, as we recognize that our culture and community still has much to learn about engaging
its ever-present machismo norms. Because of that conversation, I was reminded of a quote by
Gloria Anzaldúa:
Being lesbian and raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, I made the choice to be
queer (for some it is genetically inherent). It's an interesting path, one that continually
slips in and out of the white, the Catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous, the instincts. In
and out of my head. It makes for loqueria, the crazies. It is a path of knowledge, one of
knowing (and of learning) the history of oppression of our raza. It is a way of balancing,
at mitigating duality.
35
Nothing that I am doing in my project 9th to Olympic is actively queer, but the way that I am
organizing this type of project feels as vulnerable in a way that I have presented in queer spaces
in the past. When creating spaces for and with queer folk, everything is approached with a
manner of tenderness that counteracts the normalcy of exclusivity in the daily, making sure this
is a mission and that mission is mindful of its audience completely and collectively (of course,
not every queer space successfully creates collective harmony but that’s usually its intended
goal).
35
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute Books (1987), 91.
24
VIII. BRING CASH
However, my critiques of a la calle is in the complication of occupying a setting of brown
laborers hustling for their income disrupted by spectacle performance, which is something I too
must have in mind when I approach my own project. Choosing to place and invest myself into
an existing space with existing art and culture isn’t to take it over, but to make with and within.
When I first started going to the district, it was my late capitalist form of self-care; shopping for
fun things that looked fun and exciting and maybe making work with or about the purchases, or
maybe just adding more knick-knacks to my growing collection of knick-knacks. Of course,
seeing and talking to the people working in the area, I wanted to be more than a customer. This
district has been a captivating space that has so far tolerated and occasionally enjoyed my
presence. While my Spanish has gotten less and less fluent over the years, my lengua
equivocada [twisted tongue] has been building relationships with the storefront employees and
street vendors, encouraging but not forcing moments of collaboration and conversation.
Perhaps with the experience I have had in the past in making and collaborating with
other communities, I thought engaging with these folks could somehow manifest into a made-
for-us-and-by-us type of project. My time in this district proved to me that late capitalism has
the working class with their hands tied. I slowly but surely understood that asking these
laborers to do more than what they are already required didn’t feel right. The plans for a
collaborative thesis failed in its initial conception. But that failure manifested into thinking
about the strange economies of that district, and of the daily tactics and jobs we as citizens of
late capitalism have to do. My focus shifted: I wanted to make them money. I want their
25
businesses to thrive. It has been over a year of spending time and money in the district, and it
was integral to give them business as a “loyal customer.”
For whatever reason, I need to care for them. Some of this grows from my desire to
serve my community by providing resources and opportunities, and some of this is that
survivor’s guilt I feel about placing myself in higher education settings and working in the arts.
Guilt can prove useful. Utilizing my student loan money became part of my practice too. It
afforded me the ability to make sure I survived without having to work my multiple jobs to
make ends meet, as well as making purchases after long conversations with the store associates
and street vendors.
Inviting a different public—intentionally inviting an art public—into the party supply
district for 9th to Olympic comes with a strategy: bring cash. In order to fully participate in this
thesis project, participants are not only there to view the work created through the cultural
objects of this cultural space for merchants, it is also the duty of the participants to support the
merchants. And it is my duty to facilitate an event, a day, a project that promotes that support.
26
IX. UNCERTAINTY MAXIMIZED: AN ECONOMIC UPDATE
The current pandemic of COVID-19 proved to interrupt every aspect of space and
survival. It’s hard to say what will become of the Piñata District now, or if they will outlive the
delays that have happened to their businesses. On April 1, 2020, I drove by my beloved street
of transition, seeing no street vendors or piñatas in sight. Roll-up warehouse doors of the stores
I would wander were locked up so tight [Fig. 6]. Silence surrounded the block that once shouted
welcomes. I cried in my car for a few minutes before I made my way back home.
The safety and health of residents is obviously a fair reason to pause any and all
“nonessential” businesses. But it’s also hard to stay at home if you can’t keep a home. And this
is the concern of many folks that have lost income and/or jobs due to the break in the economy
in response to this vicious virus. The market, as U.S. residents have come to realize, doesn’t
always work in favor of the working class or the pobres. Government aid lends many hands to
large corporations and shares a few fingernail clippings to small business owners. And despite
this, I am confident that these immigrant-owned businesses can adapt and rebuild.
Throughout the month of April, I attempted to reach out to as many storefronts as I
could, making contact with the few online pages that a handful of stores had (phone calls were
not being answered). I was only able to receive contact with two—one of them being Carrusel
Party Supplies and the other being Raquel’s Party Supplies. Despite my previously learned
hesitation to directly enlist services from the laborers within the district, it seemed like this
pandemic gave me the opportunity to work with the folks at the district much more closely.
Through a stimulus-check budget granted by USC’s Race, Art, and Placemaking (RAP), I was able
to secure funds for commissioned work and materials reserved for my thesis [Fig. 7].
27
On May 2, 2020, I returned to the district to see if there was any progress with activity
on the street, and to receive a receipt for a piñata order from my friends over at Carrusel Party
Supplies. To my surprise, many of the stores had cautiously reopened and some of the street
vendors were also back. Of course, it wasn’t actually the same—adjustments had been made.
Vendors that were normally situated side by side were now more spread out. Many had
attached vinyl covers to their pop-up shades to promote a safer exchange, and some were even
selling reusable masks. Stores created policies enforcing mask-wearing and distancing, they
promoted delivery services, and while they continued to display piñatas and other party
supplies, they focused more on promoting essential products. Not every store was open, it was
mainly the larger ones that sold more than just party supplies that could continue business.
Some of my favorite stores like La Mexicanita En L.A. Party Supply (where Yolanda works) and
Candy House remained closed. The city of Los Angeles is set to allow the reopening of more
businesses on May 15, 2020, and I await to see the progress and new obstacles and
adjustments that more stores will face.
Mindfulness has changed. The strange economies once talked about in previous
paragraphs are obsolete. Surviving in a highly capitalistic nation has proven to be a failure
despite its illusions of material success. But what has grown out of this pandemic and other
domestic and worldly catastrophes is the strength of community. Now more than ever is the
time to rebuild our world in the ways we want to see it. The damages of all kinds are done. It is
understood that sustainability cannot be guaranteed by our governing officials, but it is
something that can be imagined and reimagined and produced and reproduced by the
community at large. At this time, people are losing lives, livelihoods, freedoms, and hope.
28
Through activism, crowdfunding, and virtual programming, community-led movements
continue to prosper and bring hypervisibility to new and old issues that folks are facing now or
have always had to endure. With the leadership mentality I am inheriting from the action I see
and am a participant of online, this thesis becomes a much more essential project for the folks
at the Piñata District. These efforts are much more communal, and my connection and
attachment to the district and its folks has heightened. Even without my efforts, I know of the
resilience of the working-class, Latinx community. Pobre, plebes [work-class], and rasquaches
alike know:
Limited resources means mending, refixing, and reusing every-thing...This constant
making do, the grit and obstinacy of survival played out against a relish for surface
display and flash, creates a florid milieu of admix-tures and recombinations.
36
The Piñata District is filled with the folks who can do so much with so little; it is a district of
placemakers and survivors.
36
Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility, 86.
29
Fig. 1: The decorated sidewalk of the Piñata District. October 5, 2019, photo by Dulce Soledad Ibarra.
FIGURES
30
Fig. 2: Bolsote (Wearable 2), bolsas de mercado, thread, and buttons, Dulce Soledad Ibarra, 2019.
Photo by Ethan R. Tate.
31
Fig. 3: Black fence at the Underground Museum with a sign that reads, “Attention Graffiti
Artists. Please don’t write on our walls. We can sell your work.” October 2018, Photo by Dulce
Soledad Ibarra.
32
Fig. 4: The first post created from Marciano Art Foundation Union Instagram page, posted on
November 1, 2019. Screen-grabbed on March 6, 2020.
33
Fig. 5: Creciendo (Para Yolanda), bolsa de mercado, thread, wood, Dulce Soledad Ibarra, 2019.
34
Fig. 6: The closed and graffitied warehouse doors of Candy House Party Supply. April 1, 2020, by
Dulce Soledad Ibarra.
35
Fig. 7: A sketch for Sobrevivientes, in collaboration with Carrusel Party Supplies, April 2020.
‘Sobrevivientes’ is Spanish for ‘survivors’.
36
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2019
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
The Los Angeles Piñata District is a regional landmark colored with culture, art, community, and Latinx (primarily Mexican) migrant methods of survival. My initial fascination with the district has since developed into a deeper relationship and/or commitment to the laborers there, creating a sustained exchange of conversations and commerce across time. Using local art institutions and alternative art spaces as examples for space- and placemaking, I analyze institutional failed and successful responses to and interaction with community while simultaneously thinking about the existing site of the Piñata District as an environment of equal cultural importance. ❧ The resilience of laborers and small business owners is tested daily, and the implications COVID-19 have only maximized the need for adaptable and sustainable praxis. In a time of uncertain change and transition, 9th to Olympic is a thesis project that utilizes artistic community engagement as a way to radically organize and collaborate in a fixed capitalistic system that disproportionally affects working-class, migrant folk.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Ibarra, Dulce Soledad
(author)
Core Title
Los pobres comen tan rico: surviving together
School
Roski School of Art and Design
Degree
Master of Fine Arts
Degree Program
Fine Arts
Publication Date
07/12/2020
Defense Date
07/09/2020
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
adaption,art,art space,Chicano,class,collaboration,Community,community engagement,contemporary art,COVID-19,downtown Los Angeles,gallery,generational trauma,guilt,Immigrants,laborers,late-capitalism,Latinx,Los Angeles,Marciano Foundation,Merchants,Mexican,migrant laborers,MOCA,museum,OAI-PMH Harvest,Piñata District,public space,Race,resilience,site-specific,Small business,social practice,socially engaged art,Street vendors,Survival,survivor's guilt,sustainability,Underground Museum,Xicanx
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Bustamante, Nao (
committee chair
), Chang, Patty (
committee member
), Kim, Annette (
committee member
)
Creator Email
dsibarra@usc.edu,dulce.soledad.ibarra@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-326390
Unique identifier
UC11666002
Identifier
etd-IbarraDulc-8656.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-326390 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-IbarraDulc-8656.pdf
Dmrecord
326390
Document Type
Thesis
Rights
Ibarra, Dulce Soledad
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
adaption
art space
Chicano
collaboration
community engagement
contemporary art
COVID-19
gallery
generational trauma
guilt
late-capitalism
Latinx
Marciano Foundation
Mexican
migrant laborers
MOCA
Piñata District
resilience
site-specific
social practice
socially engaged art
survivor's guilt
sustainability
Underground Museum
Xicanx