**Due to coronavirus (COVID-19) precautions this event was privately recorded and posted online. View the lecture here, also available in our video archive. Thank you for your understanding.**

Oakland-based artists Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes discuss their graphic arts collaboration Dignidad Rebelde. They write, “We believe that art can be an empowering reflection of community struggles, dreams, and visions. Following principles of Xicanisma and Zapatismo, we create work that amplifies people’s stories and art that can be put back into the hands of the communities who inspire it. We recognize that the history of the majority of people worldwide is a history of colonialism, genocide, and exploitation. Our art is grounded in Third World and indigenous movements that build people’s power to transform the conditions of fragmentation, displacement, and loss of culture that result from this history.  Representing these movements through visual art means connecting struggles through our work and seeking to inspire solidarity among communities of struggle worldwide.”

Melanie Cervantes (Xicanx) has never lived far from the California Coast. Born in Harbor City, California and raised in a small city in the South Bay of Los Angeles Melanie now makes her home in the San Francisco Bay Area where she creates visual art that is inspired by the people around her and her communities’ desire for radical social transformation. Melanie’s intention is to create a visual lexicon of resistance to multiple oppressions that will to inspire curiosity, raise consciousness and inspire solidarities among communities of struggle.

In 2007 she co-founded Dignidad Rebelde, a graphic arts collaboration that produces screen prints, political posters and multimedia projects that are grounded in Third World and indigenous movements that build people’s power to transform the conditions of fragmentation, displacement and loss of culture that result from histories of colonialism, patriarchy, genocide, and exploitation. and Dignidad Rebelde’s purpose is to illustrate stories of struggle, resistance and triumph into artwork that can be put back into the hands of the communities who inspire it.

Melanie has exhibited extensively nationally, including at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco); National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago); and Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY) and internationally at the Musée d’Aquitaine (Bordeaux, France), Galerija Alkatraz (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Museo Franz Mayer (Mexico City, Mexico).  Her work is in the permanent collections of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, the Latin American Collection of the Green Library at Stanford, the Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College and the Library of Congress and the as well as various other public and private collections throughout the U.S.

Cervantes is the inaugural recipient of the two-year Art In Resistance Fellowship (2019-2020), as well as being recognized as Dignidad Rebelde with The Piri Thomas & Suzie Dodd Cultural Activist Award from Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (2016), Community Award, National Association of Chicana/Chicano Studies (2015), the NALAC Fund for the Arts(2012) and the Exemplary Leadership award from San Francisco State University (2010). She holds a BA in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jesus Barraza is an interdisciplinary artist with a MFA in Social Practice and a Masters in Visual Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. He holds a BA in Raza Studies from San Francisco State University. He is a co-founder of Dignidad Rebelde a graphic arts collaboration that produces screen prints, political posters and multimedia projects and a member of JustSeeds Artists Cooperative a decentralized group of political artists based in Canada, the United States and Mexico. From 2003-2010 he was a partner at Tumis design studio where he worked as web developer, graphic designer and project manager. In 2003 he was a co-founder of the screen printing studio Taller Tupac Amaru that produced political posters and fine art prints. He is currently a lecturer in the Ethnic Studies department at UC Berkeley.

Barraza has worked closely with numerous community organizations to create prints that visualize struggles for immigration rights, housing, education, and international solidarity. Printmaking allows Barraza to produce relevant images that can be put back into the hands of his community and spread throughout the world. He believes that through this work and the work of Dignidad Rebelde, he plays a role in keeping the history of graphic art activism alive.  He proudly continues the tradition of graphic art in the spirit of Jose Gaudalupe Posada, OSPAAAL and Juan R. Fuentes, whose artwork has been part a pivotal part of social movements. Barraza prides himself on his continued connection to his community and his availability as an activist artist who can be relied on for help.

In September of 2014 Barraza led Dignidad Rebelde’s mural for the 5×5 Project, Washington DC’s largest temporary public art initiative as part of Stephanie Sherman’s Near Futures project. In June of 2014 Barraza participated in the exhibitChicano Dreams at the Musée d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux, France. In November 2013 Dignidad Rebelde presented their exhibition Future Ancestors at SoleSpace in Oakland and in September 2013 Barraza was invited to participate in the Embedded in Community: What Is Social Practice? panel at Leeway Foundation’s REVOLVE: An Art for Social Change Symposium. In 2015 he completed his MFA and received the Barclay Simpson Award, the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award, and held his MFA exhibition at the Galeria de la Raza.

Barraza has exhibited at Galeria de la Raza (San Francisco); Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe); El Paso Museum of Art (El Paso); de Young Museum (San Francisco); Mexican Fine Arts Center (Chicago); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco); and internationally at the House of Love & Dissent (Rome), Parco Museum (Tokyo), Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juarez(Mexico) and El Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore (Bolivia). He was a 2005 artist-in-residence with Juan R. Fuentes at San Francisco’s prestigious de Young Museum, and is a recipient of the “Art is a Hammer” award in 2005 from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics and the “Exemplary Leadership Award” from the SFSU College of Ethnic Studies College in 2010.

For more information, visit artsdesign.berkeley.edu