By Luis Castilla
The Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) will hold an exhibit that explores the experiences of Latino/a youth culture in 1990s Los Angeles.
VPAM will have an opening reception Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. which will feature a car show with NU MINIS, VW Clan and Lady Volks. There will also be guest DJs, refreshments, and a cash bar.
The artist behind “Echoes of a Collective Memory” is Guadalupe Rosales, a Los-Angeles-based artist and activist whose work has been featured at VPAM before as well as other museums in the nation.
“Having previously worked with Guadalupe in a group exhibition, we are so excited to deepen our engagement with her work at the museum,” said VPAM Director Pilar Tompkins Rivas.
The exhibit will explore the experiences, cultures and lifestyles of Latino/a youth in the 1990s through a two-channel video, sculptures, a wall collage, a payphone sound piece, and an altar honoring her cousin who passed away from gang violence.
“Teenagers, including myself, were creating unique spaces in the midst of gang violence, the 1992 L.A. Riots, and other racial injustices such as proposition 187,” said Rosales.
Rosales is also the founder and operator of two Instagram accounts. “Veteranas and Rucas” is dedicated to archiving photographs of Latino/a women raised in Southern California and “Map Pointz,” which focuses on the youth party scene of communities of color in the 1990s.
“I began to understand my work as a personal and collective memory of that time. It is about unlearning/relearning/reexamining our history as youth in Southern California. It is also about honoring those who we’ve lost in time,” said Rosales.
The exhibit will be on display from Saturday to Jan. 19. Admission is free and the exhibit is open to the public.