La Raza Art and Media Collective: 1975 – Today

Curated by Dave Choberka, Mellon Foundation Curator for University Learning & Félix Zamora Gómez, Program Coordinator for Engagement, U-M Arts Initiative

Three Generations of Latinx Artists at U-M

During the fervent years of the 1970s at the University of Michigan, a pioneering group of Latina/o students formed La Raza Art and Media Collective. Through self-organized exhibitions, cultural gatherings, and its journal, the collective gathered artists, art historians, poets, and journalists to voice the cultural and political expression of Chicano, Hispanic, and Latin American communities on campus and beyond.

This exhibition revisits the 50th anniversary of the foundation of RAM Collective to reflect on the profound impact of these visionary creators by presenting the four original issues of its multimedia journal produced between 1976 and 1977. The journals are exhibited for the first time accompanied by their galley proofs and original artwork preserved at U-M’s Bentley Historical Library. To highlight the multigenerational links between RAM Collective and today, the journals are framed by original art commissions from three generations of Latinx alumni artists from the U-M Stamps School of Art and Design—George Vargas, Nicole Marroquin, and Michelle Hinojosa.

This exhibition explores the vital contributions of Latinx artists to Michigan’s cultural landscape and the legacy these important historical works have had on campus and beyond.

Artist statement:

This artist statement is based on an interview that took place over video call between Michelle Inez Hinojosa (State College, Pennsylvania) and Félix Zamora Gómez (Ann Arbor, Michigan) on June 7, 2024:

Looking into the [RAMC] journals is like opening Pandora’s box and confronting chaos and asking yourself, what’s my role in all of this? A lot of the work that I do is about storytelling, migration, and working with fiber. I am interested in intergenerational storytelling, and there’s a lot of that in the journals. I was curious about those connections, and that led me to ribbons as a way to understand my place in this exhibition.

I decided that I would approach my installation as one tiny part of a tapestry that extends beyond those windows into another universe. Similar to when you zoom in far enough on a rug or or a tapestry or a quilt and you only see a couple of strings. The intergenerational aspect of this piece is very important to me as I imagine a thread going one way and perhaps representing George [Vargas], and then another thread going in a different direction that maybe represents Nicole [Marroquin], and another thread may be the institution, and so on. My goal with this piece was to think about how to connect, just like how this exhibition is trying to make sense of what is happening in the journals. In a way it is also a gesture toward the future.

Color is an index in my mind for a memory or a place, and I love hearing about other people’s interpretations of color, too, because color is so specific to individual people. My grandmother’s house was covered in weird colors and prints and textiles that she collected throughout her life. She also hand-painted murals on her walls. Color is my way of honoring domesticana* as a way for women to take control of their space.

*Domesticana is a term coined by artist and Chicana-feminist theorist Amalia Mesa Bains in 1999 to refer to artworks using materials and techniques associated with women. It was a response to masculine associations that proliferated in writing about Chicanx aesthetics.