Taller Tupac Amaru: A Decade of Radical Printmaking featuring Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, and Favianna Rodriguez
Mar. 17, 2013-Apr. 16, 2013
All around us, artists are forming the vanguard of social change by harnessing their vision and design-thinking skills to formulate their own solutions to social problems—pushing the boundaries of the ways creative sensibilities can function in the community. Art and design continue to be used to inform, organize, influence public opinion, protect and restore the environment as well as advocate for human rights of all people.
In A Decade of Radical Printmaking, Taller Tupac Amaru, an Oakland-based collective of Xican@ artists including Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, and Favianna Rodriguez, reveals the social and political power of art. Founded in 2003 and named after the last indigenous monarch in Latin America, the collective's mission is "to create and distribute screenprinted political posters and to foster a resurgence in the screenprinting medium as a tool for social change." The exhibited prints honor the collective's ten-year collaboration and their work with social justice and community organizations in the Bay Area and beyond.
Representing their distinctive aesthetics, these revolutionary artworks demonstrate the ability screen and digital printing have in leveraging a sense of humanity in order to inspire others and produce change. The vibrant prints by Barraza, Cervantes, and Rodriguez feature bold portraiture and assertive phrases like “migration is a human right” and “we will not comply” that inform and instruct as much as please the eye. These works represent how artists use this medium to make political statements, protest social injustice and condemn civil rights inequalities in order to fashion a more humane and just world.
From portraits of musicians to civil rights leaders, from Indigenous-inspired iconography to direct protest announcements, these works embody cultural pride, activism and a call to action.
—Stacy Asher, Instructor, Design and Social Change
The exhibition and events are co-sponsored by USF’s CELASA and Chican@-Latin@ Studies among others.
About the artists
Jesus Barraza is an activist printmaker and digital artist based in San Leandro, California. Using bold colors and high contrast images his prints reflect both his local and global community and their resistance in a struggle to create a new world. Barraza’s work continues the tradition of graphic art in the spirit of Jose Gaudalupe Posada, OSSPAL and Juan R. Fuentes.
Melanie Cervantes is a Xicana activist-artist whose role is to translate the hopes and dreams of justice movements into images that agitate and inspire.
Favianna Rodriguez uses the arts as a tool for liberation. Since 1998, Rodriguez's pieces have been posted on street corners, store windows, telephone poles, raised at mass rallies and community festivals, or may have found their way into your mailbox. Her artwork carries on a Bay Area tradition of designing and printing socially conscious art for progressive political causes and grassroots organizations.
Events
- Artist Panel with Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes and Favianna Rodriguez
Monday, March 25, 2:30-3:30 p.m., McLaren 250
A reception will follow in the gallery - Final Thursday Chamber Ensemble
Thursday, March 28, 12-12:40 p.m., Thacher Gallery
Bring your lunch and enjoy live chamber music by USF student musicians - Hands-on Screenprinting Demonstration
Monday, April 15, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., Thacher Gallery
Learn the process of screen printing with USF student artists