Soldadera: Creative Research in the Archives of the Mexican Revolution with UCR Professor Jennifer Doyle and artist Nao Bustamante

About this Event:

In 2014-2015, pursuing her interest in the history of women's participation in The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), artist Nao Bustamante explored UCR's extensive collection of photography and other materials pertaining to this period in Mexico's history. Special Collections & University Archives staff supported Bustamante's work by digitizing photographs, allowing the artist to include, manipulate and transform these photographs as she produced new work for a 2015 exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum in East Los Angeles. Professor Doyle curated this exhibition, and supported it by editing a series of essays published on KCET's website, exploring the artist's process and the historical context for this project which pivots on a 2015 meeting between the artist and Leandra Becerra Lumbreras. During the war, Lumbreras was an Adelita providing quartermaster support for revolutionary fighters — at the time of their meeting in Guadalajara, Lumbreras was 127, the oldest living person.

Moderated by Dr. Romina Robles Ruvalcaba, Assistant Professor of history at UC Merced

About the presenters:

Jennifer Doyle, Professor of English, UC Riverside

UCR Jennifer Doyle teaches American Studies in the English Department, and has worked at UCR for over twenty years. She is the author of Campus Sex/Campus Security (2015), Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (2013), and Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (2006). She is also a curator, and curated Nao Bustamante: Soldadera, for the Vincent Price Art Museum (2015). She has also been a guest curator for The Broad Museum, and is a member of the Board of Directors for Human Resources Los Angeles, an interdisciplinary arts space in Chinatown, Los Angeles.

Nao Bustamante, Professor of Art, Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California

Nao Bustamante is an internationally known artist, originally from California; she now resides in Los Angeles. Bustamante's precarious work encompasses performance art, video installation, visual art, filmmaking and writing. The New York Times says, "She has a knack for using her body." Bustamante has presented in galleries, museums, universities and underground sites all around the world. She has exhibited, among other locales, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the New York Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Sundance International Film Festival, Outfest International Film Festival, El Museo del Barrio Museum of Contemporary Art, First International Performance Biennial, Deformes in Santiago, Chile and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. She was also an unlikely contestant on TV network, Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist." In 2014-15, Bustamante was the Queer Artist in Residence at UC Riverside and, in 2015, she was a UC MEXUS Scholar in Residence in preparation for her solo exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles.