Yolanda López’s first museum show opens Saturday, just weeks after the artist’s death

Enlarge this image

Yolanda López died on Sept. 3 of complications liver cancer. Her first museum solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego was delayed by a year due, in part, to the pandemic.

Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

hide caption

toggle caption

Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Enlarge this image

Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin de Guadalupe «represent one of the earliest feminist reinterpretations of the Virgin, which, in the following decades, became a major focus of Chicanx art and literature—owing much to the influence and prevalence of López’s work, the museum’s curator Jill Dawsey told NPR.

Yolanda López/Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

hide caption

toggle caption

Yolanda López/Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Enlarge this image

One of the paintings from Yolanda López’s series «¿A Donde Vas, Chicana? Getting Through College — self-portraits that show her running, in and around UC San Diego when she was a graduate student.

Yolanda López/Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

hide caption

toggle caption

Yolanda López/Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Yolanda López’s «Who’s the illegal alien, PILGRIM? was created in 1978 in response to then-President Jimmy Carter’s immigration plan.

Yolanda López/Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

hide caption

toggle caption

Yolanda López/Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

In 1978 López also created an early version of the iconic poster featuring an Aztec man in a headdress that mimicked the Uncle Sam army recruiting poster. She made it for the Committee on Chicano Rights and it was a critical response to President Jimmy Carter’s immigration plan and growing anti-immigrant sentiment.

López’s version, the indigenous figure points his finger at the viewer asking, «Who’s the Illegal Alien, PILGRIM?

When providing her own thoughts behind «Three Generations: Tres Mujeres, a series of nearly 8-foot tall charcoal drawings featuring her mother, grandmother and herself that are also included in the museum exhibit, López wrote, «A common Chicano/Latino experience in contemporary American culture is the lack of positive visual representations of Latin Americans as normal, intelligent human beings. This omission and the continued use of such stereotypes as the Latin bombshell and the passive, long-suffering wife/mother negate the humanity of Raza women. The depth and breadth of our potential for moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical courage has rarely been displayed.

She was also critical of the Western European concepts of beauty that dominate mass media and leave women who don’t meet such conventions «feeling isolated and bewildered.

«People need to understand that they can be participant in the developing of a better society for all of us, she said in a 2020 interview.

While López’s body of work has been widely respected among Chicano artists, leaders and scholars, it is only in the last decade or so that she has begun to get the recognition she deserves, Adriana Zavala, an associate professor in Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University and director of the US Latinx Art Forum, told NPR.

«Part of that has to do with the whiteness of the art world ecosystem, she said, adding that that is slowly changing.

Zavala’s organization recently partnered with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts to launch the Latinx Art Visibility Initiative, which includes $50,000 grants for 15 artists over the next five years. López was among those chosen in July.

Enlarge this image

Yolanda López (far right) is pictured at a rally at Holly Park in San Francisco.

Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

hide caption

toggle caption

Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Yolanda López (far right) is pictured at a rally at Holly Park in San Francisco.

Images courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

López was in the final months of her life when she learned of the honor and thoughts about her own legacy were at the forefront of her mind. «This is extremely important especially since my generation is beginning to die, López told Mission Local in an interview.

She said she planned to use the money to organize her life’s work into an archive that can serve as an educational tool.

The aim of the fellowship is to increase visibility around Latinx artists beyond the word of Chicano or Latinx art, and into more mainstream culture. Often, Zavala said, López and the other artists selected «are misunderstood as betwixt and between.

«Are they American artists or are they Latin American artists? We really focus on bringing public understanding to the fact that these are American artists, but they often are rendered invisible within the rubrics and the structures of the art world, according to Zavala.

Over years of friendship with the artist, Zavala said it was clear that López, even from her early days was most interested «in a value for a creative expression that is beyond outside of kind of gallery and museum world.

It was a value system that appeared to stay with her through the very end. After learning about the fellowship she said was most grateful that it wasn’t a competitive type of award.

«That’s the great joy, that I didn’t have to compete with anyone else. They accepted me on my own terms, she said.