Highlights of the MOLAA Collection
Ecofeminism: Judy Baca
Around the Matriarchal Mural and its symbols
Gabriela Urtiaga, Chief Curator, MOLAA
An essential figure in the Los Angeles art scene, Baca is a pioneer in creating art in communities. She has always been, and continues to be, searching for new alternatives to speak about those silenced and invisible themes in society, and therefore in the art world. Thus, since the seventies, she has been showing, as a gesture of resistance, her commitment to the creation and promotion of public memory sites in historically neglected communities.
The figure of the woman and the relationship with the mestiza and collective consciousness, with the scars and memory of the land, are fundamental in her creative discourse.
In 1981, Baca led a workshop for thirteen women, mostly of color, at the iconic Woman's Building in Los Angeles . With the goal of creating a mural, Baca proposed that each participant record images, ideas, and meanings from their dreams that in some ways are associated with the figure of the empowered woman.
Interestingly and strikingly, when the images were shared, many of the women coincided in a handful of similar representations: women crossing the river, women united with nature, in the midst of catastrophic scenes of the ecosystem such as a volcano eruption.
Later, Baca continued to think about those conversations and was influenced by some of her favorite readings and decided to continue with the mural. From this extensive exploration process, one of the fundamental works of her career emerged: Matriarchal Mural: When God Was a Woman (1981/2021), a long-term project, full of knowledge and experiences, that evokes the connection between social injustice and the exploitation of nature, as well as the dreamed rebirth of the empowered woman in connection with her environment, mother nature.
In line with that link between femininity and nature, the union with creation, Baca presents a sensitive and distinct symbolism to show the empowerment of a woman, a woman who emerges from nature and connects with it. A woman essentially creative and fighter... an amazon.
Matriarchal Mural is conceived in the possibility of searching for a new historical paradigm of universal creation. Baca thought of the great mural piece as a double-sided triptych with the same background container: the volcano that emerges from the earth, the fire god with mother nature as a symbol of femininity.
"The thirteen women in the volcanic eruption" incorporates the young workshop participants who gave birth to the mural and who in turn represent the Latina and Chicana woman, the mestiza woman. Their naked bodies appear with their feet submerged in the burning lava of the volcano, showing the palms of their hands. In the center, one of them holds a heart, synonymous with life.
From the same preliminary images, "The birth of the vision of the heart" emerges. This other side of the mural continues the story with the great ceremony of a ritual performed by a goddess who possesses vital energy, Mother Earth. She rises with open arms that, instead of hands, extend into large branches with leaves, and her rhizomatic legs plant their deep roots in the earth and water in a fertile pond with the oldest forms of life.
Judy Baca created this powerful work as a philosophical proclamation, thinking about humanity's present and the future, the new generations, for the emergence of a new commitment to the environment, similar to the ancestors in the Americas.
NOTES:
[1] Organization created by and for women artists (1973-1991). name.
Judith F. Baca (United States, b. 1946)
Matriarchal Mural: When God Was A Woman, 1980 - 2021
Double Sided Triptych:
The Birth of the Vision of the Heart (Side 2)
and
Thirteen Women in the Volcanic Eruption (Side 1)
Acrylic on wood panels
H 8 x W 12 feet
MOLAA Permanent Collection. Museum purchase from the Lynne Okon Scholnick Acquisitions Fund, M.2019.028
Collaborators:
2021 Painting Assistants: Martha Ramírez-Oropeza, Gina León
1980s: Julie Ruelas and Yreina Cervantez, plus 10 additional women