This panel discussion explores the intersections of queer and Latina/o art, aesthetics and performance through a dialogue with Dino Dinco, an artist, filmmaker and curator whose work has been exhibited internationally; Raquel Gutiérrez, a writer, performer and founder of several queer-women-of-color, community-based art and literary projects; scholar Robb Hernandez, whose dissertation focused on queer Chicano art and aesthetics in East Los Angeles; and artist Joey Terrill, a formative figure in the Chicano art movement and AIDS cultural activism. Addressing often obscured or omitted histories of queer and Latina/o cultural production in Los Angeles, the speakers will consider how such legacies affect contemporary art practice and their relation to “the archive.”
Bios
Dino Dinco is an independent curator, filmmaker, theatre director and multidisciplinary artist. Dinco recently completed a year-long residency at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) as performance-art curator from 2011 to 2012. Dinco’s visual and curatorial work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Paris, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as in group shows in London, Paris, São Paulo, Bilbao, Antwerp, Hasselt (Belgium), Mexicali, New York and Hamburg. Images from his photographic series Chico were featured at Salon Paris Photo at the Louvre. His work has appeared in publications such as Artillery, i-D (UK), Revista Espacio (Mexico) and Vogue Brasil (Brazil). His experimental short play Real Women Have Periods was presented at REDCAT, and his award-winning short film El Abuelo premiered at the Tate Modern in London. In 2011, he completed his first feature-length documentary, Homeboy, which profiles gay Latino men who were in gangs. (Vimeo)
Raquel Gutiérrez cut her teeth on Los Angeles performance art when she interned and house managed at Highways Performance Space in the year 2000. Raquel is a performance writer, playwright and cultural organizer who has studied in university settings and performed in a variety of locations, like the Salvadoran countryside, cabarets, galleries, San Antonio, universities and Pico-Union. Gutiérrez cofounded the performance ensemble Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP), a community-based and activist-minded group aimed at creating a visual vernacular around queer Latinidad in Los Angeles. She has published work in Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing, LA Weekly, make/shift, Journal of Chicana/Latina Studies and Izote Vos: Salvadoran American Literary and Visual Art. Currently, Gutiérrez is in the community scholars program through the UCLA School of Urban Planning and is the manager of community partnerships for Cornerstone Theater Company, a leader in community-based theatre-making in the United States. (Blog)
Robb Hernandez is the Carlos E. Castañeda Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is revising his manuscript on the queer visual aesthetics of the Chicano avant-garde in East Los Angeles. He received his PhD from the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he cofounded the first U.S. Latina/o studies program in the mid-Atlantic and coordinated the Latino museum studies program for the Smithsonian Latino Center. His book The Fire of Life: The Robert Legorreta—Cyclona Collection, 1962–2002 was published by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press and earned an International Latino Book Award in 2010. His work has appeared in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals and Mixed Race Hollywood.
Joey Terrill is a formative figure in the Chicano art movement and AIDS cultural activism and is a former board member of VIVA!, the first gay and lesbian Latino art organization in Los Angeles. Born in 1955 and raised in Highland Park, Terrill has been influenced by sources as diverse as pop art, Mexican retablos, twentieth-century painters ranging from Romaine Brooks to Frida Kahlo and the energy, politics and creative synergy of Chicano and queer art circles in Los Angeles. Over the last 30 years, Terrill has created seminal portraits of everyday queer life in the barrios. His work has been included in such exhibitions as Gronk and Joey at Score Bar (1984), Alex Donis/Joey Terrill: Two Points of View at Echo Park Gallery (1991) and, most recently, Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972–1987 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2011). (Official website)