LACMA

Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement is the first comprehensive consideration of Chicano art in almost two decades and the first such effort at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art since the end of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It would be impossible for this exhibition, or any other, to adequately represent the field as it has developed since that time, let alone allay the persistent underrepresentation of Chicano art and artists in mainstream exhibitions. The responsibility for exploring and assessing the various dimensions of Chicano art belongs not to a single exhibition but to the institutions whose missions include contemporary art, American art, and art of the Americas. Thus, our goal here is not to fill a void in the exhibition record, but rather to consider what we feel is one of the distinctive features of recent Chicano art: that which privileges conceptual over representative approaches, and articulates social absence rather than cultural essence. Phantom Sightings focuses attention on these conceptual and interventionist tendencies, which have not yet been sufficiently documented in art historical literature. It traces these modes to the late 1960s and thereby adds a new dimension to our understanding of changing notions of ethnic identity, cultural politics, and artistic practice. While attentive to historical context, Phantom Sightings places an emphasis on a newer genera- tion of emerging artists and several influential figures from across the United States, in some cases artists who do not work under the label of "Chicano art." These artists engage local and global politics, mix high and low cultures, and sample sanctioned and boot- legged sources. As with earlier Chicano conceptual artists and groups, these artists situate their work at the crossroads of local struggles over urban space, transnational flows of culture, and global art practices. In approaching this exhibition, rather than take on a curatorial model that attempts to "cover all the bases" (such as a survey, biennial, or juried exhibition approach), we have pursued an exhibition that focuses on conceptual art and urbanism following the Chicano civil rights movement. We take the Chicano movement as a historical context and as a curatorial point of departure, but not as the basis for a proper name for the art or the artists. That decision will, no doubt, occasion considerable debate, but we see it as the necessary foundation for this exhibition on two fronts. One, we wanted to explore the gray zone between categories, between inclusion and exclusion, without grounding our effort in identity. The artists in this exhibition call themselves many different things, but their work explores similar conceptual processes vis-à-vis social, cultural, and political issues related to the Mexican-descent population in the United States. That said, some established artists whom we selected did not want to participate in what they thought was an "ethnic" or surname-based exhibition. There are those on both sides who see not a gray zone but an impassable border between mainstream success and cultural identity. Two, we wanted this exhibition to follow the same process as most other exhibi- tions in a mainstream institution. That is, we wanted to give ourselves the freedom to follow an idea, rather than represent a constituency. We do so not as a critique of the latter process but as an alternative that has rarely been undertaken. INTRODUCTION 13

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