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Jose Sanchez

Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis on painting. His work is an investigation of the interactions between different value systems found throughout Los Angeles, with a focus on intelligence, legitimacy, and authority. A driving question in his practice asks, “how as artists can we make work that, on the one hand, validates the neglected experiences of the people we care about (i.e., through direct positive representation and intervention) and, on the other, be a critical reflection on those structures that created the conditions of making a people socially, politically, economically invisible?” His projects manifest as pedagogical interventions as an arts educator for marginalized youth, paintings, performance, video, documentary video, and his socially engaged art practice.

@theotrajose

Jose Sanchez

Jr., 2020
Acrylic and cellophane on wood panel
48 x 24 inches

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Jose Sanchez

Lucia, 2020

Acrylic and cellophane on wood panel

60 x 24 inches

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Jose Sanchez

Marga, 2020

Acrylic and cellophane on wood panel

60 x 24 inches

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Jose Sanchez

We Heal in Los Rios, 2020

Video

0:36

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We Heal in Los Rios

José Guadalupe Sánchez II, a Mexican-American artist from Los Angeles, often confronts issues of machismo, colonialism, labor, and the body in his work. In this series of three portraits mixing elements of performance, painting, and collage, Sánchez honors the elders of his family who have passed on. Standing five feet tall, these life-size depictions of Sánchez’s cousin, grandma, and great-aunt are adorned with cellophane paper, cut to resemble the rounded edges of the decorative Mexican papel picado. Thinking about how our elders occupy space after they have passed on, the three figures are depicted in their daily acts; sitting down, posing for a picture, leaning on a loved one. Within each painting depicting his relatives, Sánchez incorporates sketches of walls and corners within to showcase the home in relation to the corporeal and spiritual body. Accompanied by a video interview between Sánchez and his brothers entitled, We Heal in Los Rios.

Sánchez interviews his brothers on their relationship to their late father. Through the interview and these three paintings, Sánchez contemplates the ways in which machismo in Latinx society has disallowed men from being sensitive, mourning, and healing. – Leah Perez

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Leah Perez is from Los Angeles, California. Leah Perez completed her Bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Latino and Latin American Studies at the University of Southern California, with a focus on visual art and media of both U.S. Latinxs and Latin Americans. She is currently pursuing her MA at Roski School or Art and Design at USC. Her research interests lie at the intersection of art and ethnic culture, particularly focusing on contemporary and historical aesthetics of Black and brown communities in the scope of Los Angeles. Leah currently works at the USC Pacific Asia Museum, as the coordinator for their Teen Ambassadors Program.

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