Ester Hernandez

Ester Hernández (born 1944) is a San Francisco-based Chicana visual artist best known for her pastels, paintings, and prints of Chicana/Latina women. Her work contains political, social, ecological, and spiritual themes that reflect her interest in community and political action. Her pieces also celebrate the ability of women to adapt and recreate themselves in foreign circumstances and environments. Ester's work highlight's the history of women's labor in California. [1]

Ester Hernandez
Born1944 (age 77–78)
Dinuba, San Joaquin Valley, California, U.S.
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
MovementBay Area Chicano Art Movement
Websiteesterhernandez.com

Biography

Hernández is a Chicana of Yaqui and Mexican heritage. She was born and raised by farm worker parents in Dinuba, a small town in the central San Joaquin Valley of California,[2] an area often associated with the struggle of farm workers. Ester Hernandez's artistic interest in community and political action was influenced by her father, who supported the United Farm Workers’ union led by César Chávez.

When Ester Hernandez finished high school, she got married and had a son before she went back to university. She was influenced by her family's involvement in the Farm Workers Movement and the politically charged atmosphere at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her BA in 1976.[3] In 1974 she joined the Mujeres Muralistas, the first established all-Latina mural activist group in San Francisco.[2] By 1977, she had completed eleven murals in the San Francisco area. After receiving her B.A., she worked as an art instructor at several schools and universities in the Bay Area.[3]

Hernández is best known for representing the Latino/Chicano culture and hardships of the working class in San Francisco during the Farmers Workers Movement. Growing up in Dinuba, California, she was a spectator of the riots and strikes organized by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.[4] In the early mid 1900s, labor movements began to take form and shaped the political and social climate. Mark D. Johnson, Professor of Art at San Francisco State University, states “At one time, the strongest and most important artists in California made art about labor.”[5] Many artists were inspired and began to reflect the life of the working class through their art. During her education at Grove Street College in Oakland, California, Ester Hernandez began to learn more about her own culture and the unfair treatment of the working Latina women.[4] There, she began focusing on using her art as an outlet for her anger about the treatment of her community. Hernández began a visual series on the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1975, the series still extends to the present. It is her focus on female spirituality and religious iconography.

Hernández works with a variety of media, using painting for more personal work and screen-printing for more political work. Art critic Amalia Mesa-Bains has noted:

In the 1980s, Hernandez began to develop a counterpoint to her screen printing tradition, using the medium of the pastel to create a more narrative and naturalistic rendering of characters influential within her own life. The pastel work almost serves as a pleasurable respite from the demands of a cultural critique in its joyful celebration of community.

Continues Mesa Baines, "As with her artwork of her close friend and artistic madrina (godmother) Tejana singer Lydia Mendoza, she subverts, re-contextualizes, and transforms culturally traditional images into a series of feminist icons, elevating their status to that of role models."[6] In an interview with the Mujeres Muralists, Chicana feminists art collective, her female colleagues commented about her noteworthy works: “She is best known for her depiction of Latina and Native women through her paste prints and installations.”[7]

Work

Sun Mad

One of Hernández's most renowned works of art is Sun Mad, a screen print that "speaks of the impact of the overuse of pesticides and the effect they have on the farm workers, consumers and the environment."[8] In speaking about the work, she said, "I focused on something personal, the Sun Maid box."[9] "Slowly I began to realize how to transform the Sun Maid and unmask the truth behind the wholesome figures of agribusiness. Sun Mad evolved out of my anger and my fear of what would happen to my family, my community, and to myself."[10] San Francisco Chronicle art critic, Kenneth Baker, says of this print that "Ester Hernandez's bitterly comic revisionist screen print, Sun Mad, successfully dovetails artistic intervention, political animus, and pop culture raw material."[11]

With her screen print Sun Mad, Hernández brought awareness to the injustices faced within her community. She created Sun Mad in 1982 after learning that her hometown in Dinuba, California had “polluted water and [laborers who] worked in an environment contaminated by pesticides.”[12] Depicted in Sun Mad are a bright red background, a “yellow disk of sun,” and a red bonneted skeletal figure holding a basket of grapes.[13] The replacement of the Sun Maid with a skeletal figure surprises viewers in the way that “this figure is turned against itself to comment on the corporate use of the female body to sell commodities.” [14]

Sun Raid, with The Serie Project

In 2008, Hernández was an artist in residence at The Serie Project, a workshop founded by Sam Coronado, where underrepresented artists could produce special editions of serigraphs. There, she printed Sun Raid, an edited version of Sun Mad, in which she depicted the skeletal farm worker, wearing a global GPS "security-monitoring bracelet labeled ICE, for the Immigrations and Customs Agents, signifying looming deportation."[15] Just as in Sun Mad, Hernández changes the words on the appropriation of the original Sun Maid imagery to address immigration concerns, saying the following phrases: "Un-naturally harvested," "Guaranteed Deportation: Mixtecos, Zapotecos, Triques, Purepechas" (in reference to indigenous Mexican farmers working in the U.S. from the Oaxaca region),[15] and "By-Product of NAFTA" at the bottom. On the right side of the box, it says, "Hecho in Mexico" (Made in Mexico) and on the right it says, "Mad in USA" (instead of what one might expect it to say: "Made in the USA").[16]

La Virgen De Las Calles

Hernández has played a key role in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement.[17] In 2001, Hernández created La Virgen de las Calles (Virgin of the Streets), a pastel print, to represent the hard working Latina women in a glorified and divine perspective.[18]

Most of Hernández's art is controversial but she creates with the purpose of progressing the rights of the underrepresented. Hernández often draws inspiration from her personal heroines, who include Frida Kahlo, Dolores Huerta, and Lydia Mendoza.[3]

La Virgen de las Calles was special to Hernández because it was important for her to depict the love a Chicana mother has for her family, and how many Chicana mothers just like the one in this piece “‘…[often] work day and night to educate their children because they know this is the greatest gift a parent can give a child.’"[19]

Libertad (Liberty)

The National Museum of Mexican Art is home to Hernández's 1987 etching Libertad (Liberty). The 12" by 6" artwork portrays a postmodern modification of The United States' beloved gift from France, The Statue of Liberty. As the inside of the monument is exposed, intricate Aztec carvings take center stage. At the monument's foundation, the inscription "Aztlán" translates to "White Land" or Aztec homeland, suggesting that America's roots are necessarily tied to Mexico and Mexican indigenous origins.[20]

La Ofrenda (The Offering)

In 1988, Ester Hernández produced a serigraph titled La Ofrenda (The Offering). La Ofrenda (1988) depicts a woman with a punk-style haircut facing away from spectators while showcasing La Virgen de Guadalupe (The Virgin Mary) tattooed on her back. La Virgen de Guadalupe is a symbol representing womanhood and femininity throughout Chicanx history.[21] By depicting this tattoo on a woman, Vincent Carillo argues that Hernández "questions the gendered power dynamics" that restrict women to the domestic sphere.[22]

Activism

Hernández uses screen printing for the purposes of disseminating affordable work using socio-political imagery. For instance, her screen print "Sun Mad" illustrates the deadly impact of pesticides on farm workers, consumers and the environment.[23] The poster was included in Latin American Posters: Public Aesthetics and Mass Politics, a retrospective "trac[ing] four decades of Latin American social and political history during a time of widespread crisis and unrest."[24][25] Another print, Jesus Barazza, addressed the anti-immigration act SB1070 by creating an image of La Virgen de Guadalupe as a wanted terrorist. In 1974, she joined Las Mujeres Muralistas, an influential group of female mural artists based in the San Francisco Mission District. With her long effort over the years, her art and activism has led her to become a main leader in the civil rights movement towards the advancement of Chicana/o rights.[26]

Exhibitions

Hernández's work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally since 1973. In 1988 her first major solo exhibition, titled The Defiant Eye, was held at Galería de la Raza in San Francisco. Since that time her work has appeared in such exhibitions as Day of the Dead (Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago, 1989), Meeting of the Madonnas (Ethnographic Museum, Warsaw, Poland, 1991), Mostra América (Museu da Gravura, Curitiba, Brazil, 1992), The Art of Provocation: Ester Hernández, A Retrospect (University of California, Davis, 1995), Transformations: The Art of Ester Hernández (MACLA Center for Latino Arts, San Jose, CA, 1998) and Ester Hernández: Everyday Passions (Galería de la Raza, 2001), as well as touring exhibitions including Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA) (1990–93), Ceremony of Spirit (1994–96), Chicano Expressions (1994–96), The Role of Paper (1998-2001), Chicano (2002–03), and One Heart, One World (2002). She has received awards and commissions from organizations ranging from the California Arts Council to the National Endowment for the Arts.[3]

Artwork by Hernández was recently featured in the inaugural opening of the Museo Alameda—Smithsonian in San Antonio, Texas.[27] Additionally, her work is in permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Stanford University has recently acquired her artistic and personal archives as well.[28]

Hernández's work has been a part of the exhibition, "Estampas de la Raza: Contemporary Prints from the Romo Collection," which provides a comprehensive look at Chicano printmaking from 1984 to 2011.[29] Beginning at the McNay Museum in San Antonio, TX, the show will travel to multiple institutions throughout New Mexico, North Carolina, and California.[30]

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum,[31] the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art and the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, and the Frida Kahlo Studio Museum in Mexico City.

References
  1. Burgess Fuller, Diana. Art / Women / California: Parallels and Intersections, 1950-2000. University of California Press. p. 228. ISBN 0520230655.
  2. "Sun Mad: Ester Hernández, One of the Bay Area's Las Mujeres Muralistas, Takes on Agribusiness". Cal Alumni Association. 2016-07-08. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
  3. Keller, Gary D.; Erickson, Mary; Johnson, Kaytie; Alvarado, Joaquin (2002). Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Volume II. Arizona State University: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue. pp. 24–25.
  4. "Ester Hernandez". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  5. "Ester Hernandez". homepages.gac.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  6. "Guide to Ester Hernandez Papers". Online Archive of California.
  7. Discussion with the Mujeres Muralistas, archived from the original on 2021-12-22, retrieved 2020-06-04
  8. "Sun Mad". Ester Hernandez.
  9. Heyman, Therese Thau. Posters American style. New York. ISBN 0810937492. OCLC 37588514.
  10. "Ester Hernandez: Biography". Smithsonian American Art Museum.
  11. Baker, Kenneth. "Sun Mad". Ester Hernandez.
  12. "¡Del Corazón! / American Art". 2.americanart.si.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  13. Bain, Rowan (2014). "Ester Hernandez: Sun Mad". Art in Print. 3 (6): 28–29. ISSN 2330-5606. JSTOR 43045621.
  14. Born of resistance : cara a cara encounters with Chicana/o visual culture. Sorell, V. A. (Victor A.),, Baugh, Scott L. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. 2015. ISBN 9780816532223. OCLC 927446609.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  15. "Ester Hernandez". The Serie Project.
  16. "Immigrant Invisibility and the Post-9/11 Border in Sandra Fernandez´s Coming of Age - alter/nativas". alternativas.osu.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  17. Hernandez, Mary N.; Tallman, Karen Dalziel (1998). "'Transformations: the art of Ester Hernandez' at MACLA". Internet Reference Services Quarterly. 3 (4): 21–33. doi:10.1300/j136v03n04_04. ISSN 1087-5301.
  18. "Ester Hernandez". www.esterhernandez.com. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  19. Román-Odio, Clara. editor. Sierra, Marta. editor. (2011-06-06). Transnational Borderlands in Women's Global Networks The Making of Cultural Resistance. ISBN 9780230119475. OCLC 1086461122. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. "Full caption: Ester Hernández. Libertad. Etching, copyright © 1976. Fine Prints Collection (unprocessed). Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ62-127167. Courtesy of the artist". memory.loc.gov. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  21. "The Offering/La Ofrenda". Terra Foundation for American Art. Retrieved 2021-04-09.
  22. Carrillo, Vicente (2020-12-01). "Vicente Carrillo. Review of "To Tame a Wild Tongue: Art after Chicanismo" ". caa.reviews. doi:10.3202/caa.reviews.2020.107. ISSN 1543-950X.
  23. Heyman, Therese (1998). Posters American Style. Abradale/Abrams. ISBN 0810927802.
  24. "Latin American Posters: Public Aesthetics and Mass Politics". Archived from the original on 2011-05-24. Retrieved 2010-10-25.
  25. "Latin American Posters: Public Aesthetics and Mass Politics". National Hispanic Cultural Center.
  26. "Ester Hernandez Archives | Persimmon Tree". Persimmon Tree. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
  27. "Ester Hernandez". Warnock Fine Arts.
  28. "Ester Hernandez". Ester Hernandez.
  29. Solis, Nathan. "The Chicana/o Printmakers of 'Estampas de la Raza'". kcet.
  30. Oliver de Portillo, Daniela. "Estampas Hits the Road". McNay Art Museum.
  31. "La Ofrenda, from the National Chicano Screenprint Taller, 1988-1989 | Smithsonian American Art Museum". americanart.si.edu.
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