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"La Conneccion"
"La Conneccion" By Tina Tavera
Minneapolis-based artist, Maria Cristina Tavera ("Tina") examines cultural signifiers regarding constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, national and cultural identities. The visual imagery is appropriated from Latin American legends, commercial packaging, the media, politics, comics, maps, currency, graffiti, and games. Her visual vocabulary is created by layering together clever bilingual plays on meaning. Tavera’s art is often humorous and yet simultaneously confronts the dark legacy and pervasive effects of colonialism and racism in the Americas.
Maria Cristina Tavera is a dual citizenship with Mexico and the United States. Tavera holds a Master of Leadership in the Arts from the Humphrey School and a BA in Spanish and BA in Latin American Studies from the University of Minnesota. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has received fellowships and grants: McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, Archibald Bush Leadership Fellowship, Shannon Leadership Institute, Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies program, Museum of Modern Art-New York, Forecast Public Art, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), and Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME).
Her artwork can be found in the collections of the Weisman Art Museum, Fargo Plains Museum, Oglethorpe Museum, Tweed Museum of Art and the Biblioteca Central de Cantabria, Santander, Spain. As an independent curator, she prepared the international exhibition Sus Voces: Women Printmakers in Mexico at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was co-curator for American Art its Complicated at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (“M”). Her writings have been published by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, as well as in a book titled, Mexican Pulp Art.
Website: https://www.mariacristinatavera.com/
Instagram: @tina.tavera • Facebook: Tina Tavera
La Movida:
La Movida /The Hustle – a solo exhibition of new work by Maria Cristina Tavera (“Tina”) explores how material culture (physical objects, such as clothing and domestic objects) reflects a society’s values, in this case a subculture. The exhibition’s title has many layered meanings, La Movida is the hustle, where one works hard to gain an advantage from a situation almost always for a monetary benefit... Quien no transa, no avanza… It is also a colloquial word to mean countercultural movement or nightlife scene.
Learn more about Tina's work: Here.
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Follow Tina on Instagram: @tina.tavera
Artist Bio:
Tavera’s artwork stems from her own bicultural, and bilingual identity to examine cultural signifiers regarding constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, and national identities. The artistic intent of this project is NOT to create traditional objects; instead to explore creating objects that incorporate Latin American and Latinx iconography into aesthetics. Historically the idea of ownership did not exist in Latin America prior to Spanish and European colonization. Rather, an emphasis was placed on a family’s ability to produce their own necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. People in the Americas began constructing the hierarchy of social class identities in association with imported commodities to achieve social mobility by displaying European items (fine cloth/clothes, furniture or art) in their homes or on their body. (www.modernlatinamericanart.wordpress.com) Now the evolution of material culture has transitioned even further due to the contemporary global economy.
In the 1980s, Tavera growing up in a working-class family in the U.S. would sell hand crafted silver jewelry-- made by her artisan relatives in Mexico. All of these years selling on the street and underground festival scenes (vs. in stores) was a form of resistance and means to making ends meet. The alternative spaces flourished with the DIY ideology where Latinx creatives designed their own clothing and sold handmade wares. During this time, she expanded her love of rock-n-roll to include Latin American punk music. In the U.S. many prominent American punk bands had Latino members (such as Mike Muir from Suicidal Tendencies, Ron Reyes from Black Flag, etc...). And a new genre of Latino punkers emerged whose lyrics shifted to express angst regarding Latinx community issues (poverty, censorship and political oppression) or to pay homage to their Latin American roots. In the 1990s the punk songs shifted to protest violation of immigrant rights, debated political policies such as Prop 187, NAFTA, as well as supported the Zapatista Uprising. These sub-genres of marginalized communities contribute to breaking the stereotype of immigrants in the U.S.
