Delilah Montoya

Delilah Montoya gave us a virtual tour of her show, "Chicana Bad Girls" celebrating the empowerment and courage of Chicana women.  She was curator, choosing pieces from 18 different artists, with the intention of raising awareness about the maltreatment of Chicana women, as well as depicting Chicana women as empowered/strong/bad girls.  There were a couple of art pieces that stood out to me.  The opening performance really interested me.  A woman created the "tree of life" and hung it in the middle of the front room of the museum.  Dancers dressed in snake-skin fabric came down the stairs and performed an erotic dance, followed by a man and a woman as Adam and Eve.  The end of the dance involved handing out apples and everyone taking bites.  I enjoyed how the "bad girls" show began with "sin."

Another artist had a series of charcoal drawings that incorporated self-portraiture and comic strip style art.  The self-portraits depicted herself as a stripper (she stripped her way through art school).  Each portrait had a comic book-esque element to it; a cartoon dog that she is holding, etc.  She created a play on words, making a comic "strip" (get it?...like take off your clothes...haha).

Prior to this lecture, I was really looking forward to hearing Delilah Montoya speak about her own art, since I always find it fascinating when an artist describes his or her thought process.  I was disappointed when she talked about other people's art--which it seemed she knew little about.  Honestly, I wasn't expected a virtual tour an art exhibit, and came away from the lecture uninspired.