`Protest’ launches exhibit that looks back

Instead of its usual First Friday opening, the Museo de Las Americas in the Santa Fe Arts District staged a “protest” Feb. 12 at its entrance, paying homage to the Brown Berets involved in the 1960s-70s Chicano Movement in Colorado, California, New Mexico, Arizona and elsewhere. The event kicked off the Museo’s exhibit “Chicano,” which runs through May 29, with installations by contemporary Chicano artists recalling the unsettled period.

Installations will include video, audio, graphic images, poetry and a painting representing the 1970s artistic and political expression in Denver. The exhibit recognizes protesters “who participated in an immense call for social justice –; youth, women, veterans, farm workers and others.”

Featured artists are Carlos Fresquez, Delilah Montoya, Daniel Salazar and Francisco Zamora. Salazar and Zamora also collaborate as “Los Supersonicos,” beginning in 1998 –; Fresquez in the U.S. and Zamora in Mexico (at that time). They each contribute works to a project, looking at the “multilayered underpinnings of Chicano cultural identity. This introspection has led to work that we both mock and pay homage to traditional icons. The tag team paintings in this exhibit display a melding of Mexican, Chicano, U.S. and global culture in the 21st Century,” says their joint artist statement.

It is a painted installation called “Checking Rear View of Chicano Time.” Described as “a temporal mural that spoke of these past and recent histories, it includes a Chicano portrait of the late ’60s, a pre-Columbian Codex figure holding a shield, and a figure of a Chicano waving a protest sign –; both warriors … We are creating in the ancient future.”

Daniel Salazar was a “young teenager when El Movimiento Chicano started rumbling, beckoning me, an isolated Mexican American from the suburbs of Denver to stand up and become an active participant in the struggle for justice, Civil Rights and community empowerment.” He has worked in film and photography ever since and shares an installation of B-roll footage of “marches and demonstrations since 1968, including marching out of West High School in protest or marching down the 16th Street Mall …”

Delilah Montoya grew up in the Midwest, and returned to New Mexico, her mother’s family home. Her work “brings together a multiplicity of syncretic forms and practices –; from those of Aztec Mexico and Spain to cross-border vernacular traditions –; all of which are shaded by contemporary American customs and values …”

If you go

“Chicano” runs through May 29 at the Museo de las Americas, 871 Santa Fe Drive, in the Santa Fe Arts District, Denver. Check on hours, related programs and admission at museo.org or 303-571-4401.