Latinx: Aperture 245

Description

This winter, Aperture magazine presents an issue that celebrates the dynamic visions of Latinx photography across the United States. Guest edited by Pilar Tompkins Rivas, chief curator at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, "Latinx" spans a century of image making, connecting historical and contemporary photography, and covering the themes of political resistance, family and community, fashion and culture, and the complexity of identity in American life. In "Latinx," Carribean Fragoza traces Laura Aguilar's influence on queer artmaking. Joiri Minaya remixes postcards from the Dominican Republic to unveil the fantasy of tourism. Christina Catherine Martinez profiles Reynaldo Rivera, who chronicled 1990s-era Los Angeles nightlife. Yxta Maya Murry considers three Latina curators and writers influencing how photography canons are made today. "Collectively, their images cast a greater net for the multiple ways of seeing Latinx people," Tompkins Rivas notes of the issue's photographers, "creating a visual archive whose edges are yet to be defined."

Pilar Tompkins Rivas is chief curator and deputy director of curatorial and collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles. Previously, she was director of the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College, coordinator of curatorial initiatives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and director of residency programs at 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, California. Specializing in U.S. Latinx and Latin American contemporary art, Tompkins Rivas has organized dozens of exhibitions throughout the U.S., Colombia, Egypt, France, and Mexico. She cocurated Home-So Different, So Appealing: Art from the Americas since 1957 (2017) and A Universal History of Infamy (2017) at LACMA; L.A. Xicano (2011-12) at LACMA, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles; and Vexing: Female Voices from East LA Punk at the Claremont Museum of Art, California. Tompkins Rivas curated Tastemakers & Earthshakers: Notes from Los Angeles Youth Culture, 1943-2016 (2016) and A Decolonial Atlas: Strategies in Contemporary Art of the Americas (2017) at VPAM; as well as Civic Virtue: The Impact of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Watts Towers Arts Center (2011) for the City of Los Angeles.