"Archives are inheritances. Their fate can range from dusty boxed-up obscurity to spectacular consumption. This is up to the inheritors. The case is similar with the immaterial aspects of traditions. To commit the resources necessary for preserving documents and traditions alike is to wager their appeal and usefulness to younger and future generations. In what follows, I introduce the work of the San Antonio-based Más Rudas Collective (MRC), four inventive heirs of Chicana/o art and art history. The women of MRC take up symbols and traditions of their Mexican American context and fashion weapons against the limits imposed on them by preexisting meanings embedded therein. They also playfully recognize and resist postmodernist strains of Chicana/o art history and curation that respond to the same contexts. I will read MRC’s work through the archival documents in which this art lineage materializes in order to elaborate on the adept weaponization of entrenched traditions and culturally coded gender roles undertaken by these artists."
See the full article in Journal of Feminist Scholarship, issue 12/13 (Spring/Fall 2017), pp. 38-53.
IMAGE: Más Rudas Collective, Colectiva! (digital photograph, 2009)