Otra Voz

e dorothy y un principe malverde by Claudio Dicochea

The culture of the American Southwest has been greatly shaped by our large Latino population. With respect to that, there are an incredible number of talented Latino and Latina artists working in a variety of media. Otra Voz seeks to highlight and celebrate several of these artists. Flagstaff Cultural Partners is excited for the opportunity to present this exhibition and related programming to our community.

Featuring painters: Alfred Quiroz, Claudio Dicochea, Adriana Garcia, and Daniel Martin Diaz; Video Artist: Adam Cooper-Teran; Sculptor: Hector Ruiz; Small Metals: Alma Angelina Aispuro; and others.

SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES

Opening Reception
Friday, January 9, 6-9pm

Cuentos y Cantos: Stories To Life
Sunday, January 11, 4pm

Exhibition Open
January 10 - February 19, 2009
Tuesdays - Saturdays, 11am - 5pm

Marcin Dylla in Concert
Thursday, January 22, 8pm

Artist Profile: Claudio Dicochea

After moving around for much of his life, studying and painting, Claudio Dicochea is back in Arizona attending ASU in Tempe.  He considers Arizona his “home place and birthplace”, having been raised on the Mexico and US border.  Studying for his MFA, Dicochea finds himself surrounded by innovative contemporary artists in the Phoenix area. 

Dicochea identifies himself as a “product of cultural collision”.  Living in a borderland, it is common for 2 or more cultures to come into contact, which results in an “interesting cross-pollination”.  In these “in-between places, there is an ebb and flow of culture, creating hybrid forms of cultural production”.  Dicochea recognizes that it is not particular to the Arizona border, but is evident in border-places across the globe.

In these areas, Dicochea finds both conflict and tension but also hope.  He explains that there is “tension in ANY environment where different influences are coming together, but it can be ultimately conducive for growth and change”.  It is this hope and growth that Dicochea sees in his community, his identity, and in his artwork.

Identity, to Dicochea, is an interesting concept. If identity is who you are, and that is based on where you are born and raised, it seems that you have little choice in shaping that identity. "What we are born into is random and arbitrary," he says. "We just come in, we don't have a say. We are seduced by the idea that we possess free will." This conflicting dichotomy poses some problems when defining one's identity. The idea that our environment serves as a marker of who we are "very seldom matches up with what we feel we are inside."

The tension within a borderland is “precisely what leads to awareness of self”.  When your environment is conflicted and being influenced by a variety of cultural elements, identity must be formed by what you find on the inside.  Often times in this environment, identity will become combined pulling from multiple identities or identification markers, forming a hybrid identity.  This process allows “change, growth, and evolution”. 

Dicochea’s art reflects the tensions among and within identities.  He considers perceived identities, externally defined identities, and social identities.  He often juxtaposes different themes within his art.  One approach in his art remakes elements of 18th Century Colonial Mexican art to combine Mexican folklore with contemporary images.  This “rearticulation” allows the folk art to be more accessible to a contemporary audience.  Another approach uses images of biracial couples to convey the reality that bi-racial communities are complex, living communities, which are “capable of growth and change”. 

Dicochea creates dichotomies of high art/ folk art and high class/ lowbrow to blur the distinctions between these seeming opposites, and among these social hierarchies.  He believes it makes the messages about these relationships more relevant in a contemporary setting. 

An example of his artwork that will be included in the Otra Voz Exhibition is titled, De Dorothy y un Principe Malverde.  In this painting, Dicochea juxtaposes images of iconic figures in American pop-culture to make the audience think about identity and labeling.  He hopes to convey new ideas about hybridity and biraciality and the concept that “combining different identities will forge new ones”. 

Using stereotypical images and caricatures in his artwork, Dicochea finds an unlimited visual culture, which reproduces these representations in the mass media.  As stereotypes work to define identity as fixed, Dicochea aims to destabilize stereotypes by putting those images in new contexts and re-thinking their fixed meanings.  In this way, he hopes to “use identity as agency”, not as continuing the cycle of reproduction of stereotypes. 

To see Dicochea’s artwork in Flagstaff, be sure to visit Otra Voz, open at the Coconino Center for the Arts through February 19, 2009. 

To learn more about Dicochea, visit his website.