Amalia Mesa-Bains’ Venus Envy, Chapter 1: Domesticana Defiance and Ephemeral Memories
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy I (or The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End), 1993/2022(detail); courtesy the artist and the Rena Bransten Gallery; ©Amalia Mesa-Bains; photo: Katherine du Tiel.
What forms a memory? How do spaces provoke recollection? And how do materials hold hidden histories? Amalia Mesa-Bains explores these questions in her recent SFMOMA exhibition, Venus Envy, Chapter 1: The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End, which utilizes a variety of media to create an intimate space of contemplation that evokes childhood memories, Catholic traditions, and colonial remnants of gender. Mesa-Bains also combines material and visual culture to create a space that explores femininity, domesticity, and Chicanidad. By doing so, the installation highlights how a feminist sense of Rasquache, one that she denotes as Domesticana, composes a space for identity formation and cultural values.
Rasquachismo, a term coined by Tomas Ybarra-Frausto, describes a sensibility that subverts the traditional understanding of taste and refinement by using the ‘leftovers,’ and turning them into elaborate and ornate designs.¹ Beyond aesthetic meaning, the term signifies a way of being, a worldview of the working class communities that demonstrate resistance and resilience through the preservation of materials. Mesa-Bains further nuances the term from a Chicana feminist lens, or Domesticana.² Emphasizing the gendered divisions within society, Mesa-Bains outlines how Domesticana resists majoritarian culture and taste through a spirit of Chicana emancipation that challenges the hegemonic restrictions placed on women. Domesticana disrupts the foundational patriarchal paradigms in art and art history by working through the feminine space and invoking attitudes of resilience and subversion within male-dominated spaces.
The installation was initially displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1993, then planned as three chapters known as the Venus Envy series serving as a retrospective of Mesa-Bains’ work. The series explores the spaces of women’s gendered, yet transgressive, social and cultural activities with historical representations through a contemporary Chicana lens.³ Nearly thirty years later, Mesa-Bains displayed her first chapter of the series at the SFMOMA in a two-part exhibition alongside Madrinas y Hermanas (Godmothers and Sisters), a selection of works from the museum’s permanent collection that she curated. Within this collection, viewers can see artworks by artists like Mildred Howard, Ruth Asawa, Carrie Mae Weems, and other female artists that influenced Mesa-Bains as ‘godmothers,’ or those she has worked alongside with and has shared artistic missions with as ‘sisters.’ Together, the two exhibitions create a space for Mesa-Bains to explore her past experiences, inspirations, and companions.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy I (or The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End), 1993/2022(detail); courtesy the artist and the Rena Bransten Gallery; ©Amalia Mesa-Bains; photo: Katherine du Tiel.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy I (or The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End), 1993/2022(detail); courtesy the artist and the Rena Bransten Gallery; ©Amalia Mesa-Bains; photo: Katherine du Tiel.
Mesa-Bains explores the notion of Domesticana space by creating one filled with materials from her childhood. She positions a vanity in the corner of the exhibition that overflows with objects like black and white family photographs, Virgin Mary figurines, seashells, and pearls. Dried flower petals are scattered across the vanity and the surrounding floor. White drapes hang behind the vanity, giving the sense of an intimate yet opulent space. While some might perceive Mesa-Bain’s excessive ornamentation as gaudy, within the Domesticana lens, the decorative aspects subvert the hegemonic notions of taste or buen gusto, which is the colonial concept of good taste that asserts one’s high class and social status.⁴ Together with found objects, Mesa-Bains infuses her vanity with a sense of her own past childhood experiences within a Catholic environment. The vanity’s mirror is etched with an image of Coatlicue (Nahuatl for Snakes-Her-Skirt), the Aztec mother goddess.⁵ Coatlicue is a symbol of life and death, and Mesa-Bains uses her image as a specter, like the Baroque period vanitas that render vanity meaningless when considering our mortality.⁶ Coatlicue’s image as an Indigenous goddess is juxtaposed with Catholic imagery, removing a sense of hierarchy between the two epistemologies. Through this assemblage, Mesa-Bains constructs a boudoir highlighting the ephemeral nature of the self, forms of knowledge, and memories. Besides the vanity, viewers come across a gilded stand for votive candles and a wall decorated with framed artwork. Amongst the images, viewers can see works by Carmen Lomas Garza, Alma López, Ester Hernández, and Yolanda López––an homage to some of Mesa-Bains’ artistic madrinas y hermanas. The setting assembles a convergence of women who forged spaces for themselves, whether they be artists, historical figures like the Virgin of Guadalupe, or Coatlicue.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy I (or The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End), 1993/2022(detail); courtesy the artist and the Rena Bransten Gallery; ©Amalia Mesa-Bains; photo: Katherine du Tiel.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy I (or The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End), 1993/2022(detail); courtesy the artist and the Rena Bransten Gallery; ©Amalia Mesa-Bains; photo: Katherine du Tiel.
Mesa-Bains also employs images of feminine figures on the walls and mirrors within the installation. The mirrors throughout the room display photos of prominent women in history, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.⁷ By looking into the mirror, viewers see these women overlaid onto themselves. Other mirrors depict images of personal photos of Mesa-Bains’ mother and sister. For the artist, mirrors provide a space for healing. Their reflective surfaces force a moment of introspection. Mesa-Bains encourages an interaction between the viewer and the images of these women figures, illuminating various states of memory through self-reflection. This confrontational zone interrogates women’s silencing across history in many social spaces, from the church to the home. By doing so, Mesa-Bains portrays these mirrors as a space for identity formation that recalls the past—not as something to be forgotten, but something that can be re-presented to uplift the resilient people that have endured it. The image reliefs on the installation's walls depict brides, nuns, and religious virgins, three characters that the artist explores. Mesa-Bains brings these images alongside the historical and personal to align them within the contemporary, coalescing ephemeral memories into present spaces.
Mesa-Bains’ installation also features vitrines filled with preserved personal items. One case is filled with collected mementos including family photographs, printed images of religious figures, and personal letters. This assemblage recollects Mesa-Bains’ private history and relationship with the Catholic faith while also displaying the accumulated material culture that shaped her Chicana identity. Another display contains a large porcelain figure dressed in a habit like those of monjas coronadas (crowned nuns). Throughout Mexico’s colonial period, then known as New Spain, families commissioned portraits of their cloistered daughters after professing their vows to become nuns.⁸ Whereas the elaborate clothing and ornamentation can overwhelm the viewer, they also indicate a coming of age and dedication to the lord. Another case displays a white dress worn for first holy communions alongside a bouquet, a christening candle, a white cross, and veils. Notably, in both cases, the dresses are exceptionally decorated with fine details in their fabrics and accouterments. Like the crowned nun figure, the dress suggests a feminine transition within a Catholic context. Mesa-Bains explores inscribed, gendered roles through spirituality and how representations of these decorated women are consumed throughout history as ideal roles: from devoted nuns as the ethereal brides of god to the sacramental rites of passage that children complete. By joining these cases within the installation space, Mesa-Bains intertwines her own intimate memories with the history of gendered codes of spirituality through her Domesticana lens.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy I (or The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End), 1993/2022(detail); courtesy the artist and the Rena Bransten Gallery; ©Amalia Mesa-Bains; photo: Katherine du Tiel.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy I (or The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End), 1993/2022(detail); courtesy the artist and the Rena Bransten Gallery; ©Amalia Mesa-Bains; photo: Katherine du Tiel.
Memory is intimately tied to history; without one, it’s difficult to imagine the other. . . And while both can be analyzed to make sense of the present and the future, they are also susceptible to the forgetting or removal of information. Counter-memories, in turn, seek out the hidden histories excluded from dominant narratives and force revisions of historical chronologies by supplying new perspectives of the past.⁹ Counter-memories tap into localized experiences to make them widely accessible and provide alternate readings to hegemonic narratives accepted as ‘history.’ Chicana counter-memory unifies the community by unearthing cultural representations as powerful figures, portraying communal history between oppression and resistance.¹⁰ By channeling this through the Domesticana context, Mesa-Bains deconstructs the sacred gendered tropes of brides, nuns, or religious virgins to reconsider how women have mapped their strength and resilience throughout time and space.
Mesa-Bains’ approach to feminine space, created through a duality of public and private, reconstructs and interrogates how Domesticana perspectives resist and subvert traditionally repressive spaces (domestic, religious, and personal). Specifically, by presenting religious icons alongside her personal stories, the artist removes the hierarchical power of the church and reconfigures it to the memories and legacies of women before us. In doing so, Mesa-Bains nuances the feminine space as a site where Chicana cultural formation can be emancipatory from patriarchal norms. This practice disorders the traditional patriarchal and Eurocentric notions of subject, family, and community, exemplifying an ongoing Chicana feminist struggle.¹¹ Mesa-Bains reminds viewers how women have been able to negotiate space for themselves despite historical oppression. Her inclusion of las madrinas who came before her and las hermanas that stand alongside her emphasizes how women continue to process personal and collective identity, experiences, and memories. Ultimately, she suggests that our lives are inherently ephemeral and broken into fragments of memory, but these stories don't have to be.
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Footnotes
¹ Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility (School by the River Press, 1989).
² Amalia Mesa-Bains. "Domesticana: the sensibility of Chicana rasquache." Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies (Los Angeles, CA) 24, no. 2 (Fall 1999): 157-167.
³ Laura E. Pérez, “Writing on the Social Body: Dresses and Body Ornamentation in Contemporary Chicana Art,” in Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Jennifer A. González et al. (Duke University Press, 2019).
⁴ Susan Deans-Smith, “Manuel Tolsá’s Equestrian Statue of Charles IV and Buen Gusto in Late Colonial Mexico,” in Buen Gusto and Classicism in the Visual Cultures of Latin America, 1780-1910, ed. Paul B. Niell and Stacie G. Widdifield (Albuquerque, UNITED STATES: University of New Mexico Press, 2013).
⁵ Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, "Coatlicue," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed November 2, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/coatlicue/.
⁶ Amalia Mesa-Bains, Ceremony of Spirit: Nature and Memory in Contemporary Latino Art (San Francisco: Mexican Museum, 1993).
⁷ Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a nun, poet, and philosopher who lived in New Spain during the latter half of the seventeenth century. She filled her poetry with subtle but powerful critiques of the Catholic church and the Spanish empire, ultimately leading to threats from the Spanish Inquisition. She is heralded as a proto-feminist figure during Mexico’s colonial period. See Camilla Townsend, “Sor Juana’s Nahuatl,” Le Verger 8 (2015): 1–11.
⁸ It should be noted that this practice was exclusively practiced by elite families who could afford such paintings. Nonetheless, commissioning a crowned nun painting would indicate a family's religious affiliation, good character, and high social status. See James M. Córdova, “Clad in Flowers: Indigenous Arts and Knowledge in Colonial Mexican Convents.” The Art Bulletin 93, no. 4 (2011): 449–67.
⁹ George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (U of Minnesota Press, 1997).
¹⁰ Debra J. Blake, Chicana Sexuality and Gender: Cultural Refiguring in Literature, Oral History, and Art, Latin America Otherwise (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
¹¹ Laura E. Pérez, “El Desorden, Nationalism, and Chicana/o Aesthetics,” in Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State, ed. Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcon, and Minoo Moallem (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
Joshua L. Gómez-Ortega is a Ph.D. student in art history at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research and writing concentrate on Mexico's visual and material culture, representations of women throughout Latin America, print culture, oral histories and gossip, images of social deviance, and anti-colonial resistance movements. He received his Master’s degree in Art History, where he focused on the art of Colonial Mexico. He is the Andrew Mellon Curatorial Assistant to the Permanent Collection at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Most recently, Joshua has written for Hyperallergic and was the Curatorial Assistant for the upcoming exhibition, Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium, at NMSU.