Santa Barraza

Santa Barraza (born April 7, 1951) is a Chicana mixed-media artist and painter who is well-known for her colorful, retablo style painting. Barraza pulls inspiration from her own mestiza ancestry and from Pre-Columbian art. Barraza is considered to be an important artist in the Chicano art movement.

Quotes

• It was very important for me to move back to Kingsville because my work is all about the land and the terrain and the cactus and the myths and legends and people. Especially the people, the Mexican community.

• We can take the iconography and create our own iconography.
  • A&M-Kingsville Professor Explores Blurring of Borders Through Art (26 December 2014)

• My artwork is about resistance, de-colonization, self-definition, self-empowerment and survival. I draw upon myths, family folklore, and indigenismo (a native way of being). I reinterpret and register all these as cultural, visual, iconographic manifestations of my identity. As the subject matter of my art, I exalt a lineage of women, energized from a sacred space of creation.
  • Santa Barraza, Artist of the Borderlands (2001)