Amalia Mesa-Bains

Rituals of Memory, Migration, and Cultural Space

The life and work of a celebrated multimedia artist, cultural and feminist theorist, and community organizer

Amalia Mesa-Bains has garnered international recognition for multimedia installations that evoke the Chicana experience. This lively book recounts pivotal moments from her life, career, and collaborations, examining the intertwined worlds of Latinx culture, social movements, and contemporary art.

Esteemed cultural historian Tomás Ybarra-Frausto relates Mesa-Bains’s life to contemporary events and her artistic and intellectual production to her concept of domesticana (a feminist interpretation of rasquachismo) and her mestiza identity. He demonstrates how the Chicano Movement attuned the artist to her Mexican heritage, sparking her interest in the traditional home altars that became the aesthetic and cultural inspiration for her installation art.

Employing detailed descriptions and analyses of key works, this book is an “art historical biography-memoire,” offering a uniquely personal understanding of Mesa-Bains’s prolific artistic practice and situating her life and art in the cultural and political milieu of the United States since the 1960s.

Distributed for UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press.