Rosalinda (self portrait), 2020

This series of individual self-portrait works is the continuation of an established collaborative partnership between the artists M. Jenea Sanchez, Gabriela Muñoz, and DouglaPrieta Trabajan (DPT). The relationship first began in 2015 when Sanchez was invited to paint a mural on a DPT building in Colonia Ladrillo, where the women who form the collective live and work. This auspicious beginning proved foundational to a reciprocal relationship built on trust, admiration, and respect that has led to the creation of the body of work in Division of Labor: Women Shifting a Transnational Gaze. Sanchez and Muñoz have previously photographed and rendered portraits of the women, which reflects their own gaze. Using SMoCA’s invitation as a starting point, the artists considered what it meant to imbue power to their subjects by inviting them to create their own self depictions. Sanchez and Muñoz were drawn to Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s expansive body of work that stands as a contradiction to preconceptions of the gaze and the conditioned reading of images of women in art. Iturbide often remarks of herself as being complicit with her subject, a dialogue that inspired Muñoz and Sanchez to engage the women of DPT in new conversations around the gaze, personal agency, and the power inherent in owning a narrative. The self-portraits made by the women are an active response to Sanchez and Muñoz’s own series of work and stand as a representation of their own identity through connections to personal history and tradition, as well as their associations with social and cultural roles. Through skill-sharing, a tool essential to the DPT mission, the women in this exhibition articulate the way agency is cultivated, offering a unique approach to visual narrative constructions of self. There is thoughtful focus on representation of subjectivity, and a profound exploration of power and representation through the motifs of gender, Latinx identity, equity, and the gaze. Much like the work of Graciela Iturbide—the inspiration from SMoCA’s Collection for this collaboration—these works present an unflinching challenge to prescribed artistic models in the archive of art history. These are women who manifest power through their ability to not only place themselves as central to discourse, but also as essential and non-exclusionary subjects.

Maty (self-portrait), 2020

Lupita (self-portrait), 2020

Doña Higinia (self-portrait), 2020

Doña Trini (self-portrait), 2020

Victoria (self-portrait), 2020

Maty (from the series Leche Portraits), 2018

Through her two series of works, Leche Portraits and Brown on Brown, Gabriela Muñoz conveys body politics through art expressly modeled on her aesthetic interpretation of the female experience. Drawn by the most intimate recesses of both the private and the personal, Muñoz presents a framing of self and subjectivity through the everyday and contends that the female body serves as a site of power. Initiated in 2018 and continued as an ongoing series, Leche Portraits feature women who nurture their communities. Each portrait is rendered using a mixture of earth and the artist’s breast milk as ink. The portraits are then directly screen-printed onto found, hand-embroidered objects. The inclusion of hand-embroidered objects whose origin is unknown pays an homage to invisible and domestic forms of labor that manifests throughout the work. The use of breast milk was sparked by the artist’s own personal journey breastfeeding her daughter, a process she describes as difficult and laborious. The choice of medium was inspired by a feeling of loss—late one evening—as she dumped breast milk down the sink while away from her daughter. In that moment Muñoz began thinking of the dichotomy existent in the unseen art of nurturing. Not only in the contradictorily beautiful, painful, and difficult act of a woman nursing—or nurturing—a child, but in the similar act of labor and love that comes of women nurturing their communities and environments. In the work is an intimate examination of the parallel existence between the two forms of nurturing, both relegated to being an invisible and solitary effort. Rarely is there encouragement for women to speak on the process—physically, emotionally, and mentally—of nurturing. Stricture of societal taboos dictate a woman may be able to breastfeed her child but should do so out of sight, and therefore out of mind. Media dictates that a woman’s body should focus around its sexual and reproductive functions, completely removed from some of its other natural processes that mark just as critical a role. Muñoz’s use of breast milk speaks to the selfless act of nurturing and the unseen labor behind it that reminded her of the work the women she depicts in her portraits do. Her work stands as a reclamation of the interplay between a woman’s public and private space, and the invisible labor that lies undetected in the spaces between. The portraits honor and make visible the women and the work that nurtures.

Doña Trini (from the series Leche Portraits), 2018

Hablo con Labios de Silencio, 1998

The Lady and Her Servants, 1977

Doña Higinia (from the series Brown on Brown), 2020

Brown on Brown is an ongoing series of portraits that began in 2017. The series features portraits rendered using ink made of breast milk and Mexican earth. They are printed on handmade paper consisting of saguaro, cholla, and yucca plant fibers. These plants are indigenous to the Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts. They were chosen specifically to root the pieces to the spaces and places where the women in the portraits work and reside. The series title Brown on Brown is literal. It references not only the brown earth and breast milk ink and the brown paper, but the expression of these brown women on a brown desert landscape. It validates the act of a brown artist making portraiture of women from her community, dedicating time to aesthetically honor them as a conscious and worthwhile effort. In reflecting on the color and its associations—from the time a child chooses it as the least favorite color in the crayon box to the moment a child makes that connection with the color of their own skin to its use in rhetoric meant to divide—the work becomes a declaration that shifts brown into a color of beauty. Of the series the artist has said, “As a woman of color in this world, I am cognizant that it was not designed for me. And so, surrounded by all that brownness and everything that these women represent, I realized that is where I am brownmilked. That is where I am nurtured.”

Rosalinda (from the series Brown on Brown), 2018

Old Lady Many Goats, 1972

Yo #1, 2006

Yo #2, 2006

Nuestra Senora de las Iguanas, 1996

Mujer Angel, 1996

Arrancame el Miedo, 1998

The Swamp Cleaner, 1987

Pretty Is… A Little Black Girl, 2002

Mujer Zapatista, 1998

Dance Little Girl, 2020

Run Little Girl, 2020

Labor – Victoria & Rosalinda, 2021

Originally installed and performed as a 30-foot-long wall in SMoCA’s 2016 exhibition When Push Comes To Shove, Labor is a site-specific piece created from handmade bricks produced in Colonia Ladrillo in Agua Prieta, Sonora where the members of the DouglaPrieta Trabajan (DPT) live and work. This new installation features the bricks in the form of a plinth that supports a portrait of Victoria Guadalupe Nieblas Valenzuela and Rosalinda Sagaste Chavez.

Cubes, 2003

Self-portrait, 2021

At the onset of curating an exhibition that would take a critical look at SMoCA’s Collection, the artists M. Jenea Sanchez and Gabriela Muñoz each were met with artworks that elicited a visceral reaction. They chose these specific works to respond to in new work related to the emotional and personal response the artworks in SMoCA’s Collection triggered. M. Jenea Sanchez made Self-portrait in response to Luis Gonzalez Palma’s #Yo 1 and 2. When asked why she chose Palma’s work to respond to, the artist linked the work to the experience of her very first self-depicted works. That initial series of personal, intimate work is marred by the painful experience of the files of her images being held hostage by the male photographer she collaborated with. One of the most notable things about Palma’s work for Sanchez is the power-dynamic between the male artist and his female counterpart. One that caused her to wonder what the process and interaction might have been like between Palma and his subject. The work became a reminder of a time when she felt she had to fight for her artistic voice and image. In this new series of self-portraits, Sanchez pays homage to that first body of work by recreating it. Through the process of depicting herself and controlling the gaze Sanchez reclaims the right of self-definition and ownership over her own image. Self-portrait is a series of four photographs of the artist uncovered in a desert landscape. Cacti are featured prominently with specific emphasis on the needles of the nopal. The artist’s hair intertwines between the spines in one image and in another they sprout from specific locus on her body as a sort of body armor. The configuration of the way the needles are inserted was self-evident to the artist, thinking of how they grow naturally from the nopal. In this work, Sanchez’s body is a living altar. An inherent connection to altars found strewn across the desert landscape by immigrants and laborers crossing the desert on foot and living amongst plants like the nopal and the agave, which provide life-giving sustenance. For Sanchez this work encompasses healing, protection, and connectivity.

Self-portrait, 2021

Self-portrait, 2021

Brownmilking A Future (Earth Tattoo series), 2021

Inspired by Pedro Meyer’s The Swamp Cleaner, initially through the interplay of mud or earth on the skin, Gabriela Muñoz was inspired to incorporate this tactility into her work. Muñoz created an ink by using earth harvested from the Chihuahuan Desert and her own breast milk. Expertly familiar with the process of screen printing, the idea of printing directly onto the skin felt like a natural progression for a new series focused on different forms of embodiment related to the brown body. In Earth Tattoo Muñoz’s mother sits alone in a desert landscape—rooting herself to place. On her back is a rendered portrait of herself and her granddaughter intertwined. The portrait is one Muñoz felt compelled to make in response to migrant children forcefully separated from their parents at the border. Recently having revealed that she herself was undocumented for many years, the tragedy of family separation was especially difficult to process. By printing the portrait on her mother’s back, Muñoz represents their three generations unbroken by circumstance and rooted in each other. In Brownmilking a Future, the artist emblazons the phrase on her bare chest in a viscous paste divergent from her usual applications of breast milk and earth. The term “brownmilking” is referenced in the song “Rooted” by the artist Ciara, a song that carried Muñoz throughout the pandemic like an anthem. In the song, a heavily pregnant Ciara vocalizes the importance of nurturing seeds of love, hope, and pride throughout communities of color—most importantly in our youngest generations. In this sense, brownmilking is the sharing of heritage, culture, continuity, and strength. It is the purposeful reclamation of narrative, an essential component in carving out identity and visions of futurity. “Young girl stay rooted. I done plant my seeds, now I’m rooted… Mother of a child and God I invest in ‘em. Nutritionin’, brown milkin’ ‘em.” “Rooted” by Ciara

Brownmilking A Future (Earth Tattoo series), 2021

Earth Tattoo (Earth Tattoo series), 2021

Doña Trinidad Brasil Anguamea from the Mexican Woman's Post-Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest: Food, Clothing, Shelter, y La Migra series, 2019

This multiphase series consists of large format photographs, printed on aluminum, of women who live in Agua Prieta, Sonora and are members of DouglaPrieta Trabajan (DPT). In each of the works the viewer is met head on with the gaze of the woman in the portrait, through which a dynamic link is created between viewer and subject. One in which the viewer occupies the same plane as each woman depicted, a purposeful shift by the artist from a gaze that objectifies to a gaze built on connection. Through direct representation Sanchez eschews the more figurative aspects of portraiture, and instead focuses on challenging the cultural, political, and even economic conditions under which identity is constructed. Sanchez first met the women in the summer of 2015 working on a commissioned mural at Colonia Ladrillo in Agua Prieta, Sonora, where the women reside and work. While working around them that summer, the artist was met with a powerful desire to document their work and their stories. They had left an indelible mark on her by welcoming her into their homes and sharing their organization’s mission, which spurred the creation of this series of portraits in 2017. Specific events that year forced the artist to conceptualize ideas around reverse migration. In a sporadic moment of science fiction “what if” contemplation, she pondered who she would seek out should the world go to pieces. Her first thought was these women she aspired to be, who have honed skills that have skipped generations and have built a pathway to their own futurity and that of their communities. DPT is a grassroots self-help project that began in 2003, whose purpose is to assist individuals and families of colonias populares (poor neighborhoods) by developing capacities for economic self-sufficiency. The framework of DPT surrounds a permaculture demonstration site. This site is designed to teach families techniques for sustainable food production, gardening, aquaculture, brick production, and livestock raising among other essential skills to cultivate self-determination and productive community culture. The basis of the project is a model of skill-sharing and mutual aid to reduce dependence on weak job markets, government assistance, charity, and border crossing.

Bertha Alicia Alvarado Arce from the Mexican Woman's Post-Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest: Food, Clothing, Shelter, y La Migra series, 2019

Matilde Sagaste from the Mexican Woman's Post-Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest: Food, Clothing, Shelter, y La Migra series, 2020

Rosalinda Sagaste Chavez from the Mexican Woman's Post-Apocalyptic Survival Guide in the Southwest: Food, Clothing, Shelter, y La Migra series, 2020