Art Talk: Amalia Mesa-Bains' Domestic Landscapes

November 22, 2023

6-7:30PM

Whiteman Hall

TICKETS: Free during Pay-What-You-Wish Wednesday

Artist and scholar Amalia Mesa-Bains coined the term domesticana (also known as “Chicana rasquache”) to describe her work and other Chicana artists and activists. This talk explores the meanings of domesticana in Mesa-Bains’s installations. It looks at the ways her work and ideas relate to land, residential interiors, and gender in dialogue with and distinct from rasquachismo (an aesthetic expression coming from discarded everyday materials) which is often associated with city life, outdoor spaces, and masculinity.

Bio

Kathryn E. O’Rourke is an architectural historian and professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, where she teaches courses on modern architecture and Latin American art. She holds a B.A. from Wellesley College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania. O’Rourke has written widely on art, architecture, and landscape in the Americas. She is the author of Modern Architecture in Mexico City: History, Representation, and the Shaping of a Capital (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016); and Home, Heat, Money, God: Texas and Modern Architecture (forthcoming, University of Texas Press, 2024). She serves on the visiting committee on Latin American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Art Talk is made possible by the generosity of the Tony & Milena Astorga Foundation and William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs.