Pachucxs Revisited

EXHIBITION ON VIEW JANUARY 21, 2025 – MARCH 15, 2025

CSUN Art Galleries (West Gallery) | 1811 Nordhoff St. Northridge, CA 91330

Co-curated by Marvella Muro and Sandra de la Loza

Pachucxs Revisited is a transgenerational celebration of the iconic Pachuca, a contested figure that disrupted tradition and gender expectations. The exhibition features ten diverse female-identified and non-binary artists, saluting the ever-evolving and lavish symbol - La Pachuca. The invited artists' practices challenge social, gender, and cultural conventions, defying ageism and amplifying cross-generational defiance and resistance to oppressions that individuals assigned as females at birth and women-identified continue to face. Channeling their inner Pachucx in this printmaking-based project, the artists unapologetically demonstrate their boldness through their image, body, culture, and color, asserting their place in the world. 

Featured Artists:

Janeth Aparicio, Judy Baca, Yreina Cervantez, Amina Cruz, Ester Hernandez, Jackie Hernandez "Chicas Peligrosas', Priscilla Hernandez, Sandra de la Loza, Melba Martinez, Jaklin Romine. 

To purchase prints, please contact info@selfhelpgraphics.com or check out our online shop.

Ester Hernandez, Rosie, La Pachuca, 1944, 2023. Serigraph, ed. of 60. 30 x 19 in. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art. 

La Pachuca (an image inspired by a 1944 photograph) is part of the artist’s family/ her story that honors our free-spirited, rebellious Xingona ancestors. Ester celebrates their ability to adapt and recreate themselves with a lot of style and attitude that inspires us today. Que Viva Las Xingonas!!!

Amina Cruz, Cyclona, 2024. Serigraph, Edition of 50. 30 x 22 in. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art.

Amina Cruz's work stems from a deep interest in investigating the areas between transformation and identity, personal narratives, and how inhabited spaces shape individuals. Cruz is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily uses photography as a form of exploration. They surrender to materials and collaboration as tools to investigate visual representations and forms of identity. The artist uses the camera lens to tell stories from a queer and brown perspective, disrupting the consumption of bodies and conquering of territory. It allows for an openness to what wants to be seen. Their brownness provides for an intuitive relation. They recognize and are cautious of their position as the photographer and, thus, producer of representation. Cruz is interested in art that enables viewers to connect more deeply with the preciousness and complexities of a changing self and the in-between moments that question purpose and belonging.

Jackie Hernandez "Chicas Peligrosas", Entre Los Angeles (Between Los Angeles), 2024. Serigraph. Edition of 60. 30 x 22 in. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art.

Entre Los Angeles (Between Los Angeles) highlights the experience of going out to shows with friends and expressing themselves through fashion, music, and community regardless of people's disapproval, including parents. In regards to this serigraph, the artist says, “The Pachucxs' resilience and attitude are the principal inspiration behind this work—their unapologetic way of being themselves despite adversity. The Pachucxs, with their unwavering determination, have been an enormous influence and inspiration to different Chicano subcultures within Los Angeles, one specifically being the punk scene, especially in East LA. When the punk movement was not welcomed in popular LA venues to play shows, they created spaces in their backyards and neighborhoods.”

Janeth Aparicio Vazquez, llano en llamas (Burning Plains), 2024. Serigraph. Edition of 50. 30 x 22 in. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art.

In 1973, Mexican writer and Nobel prize laureate Octavio Paz published the essay "El Pachuco y Otros Extremos" (Pachuco and Other Extremes), one of the first literary analyses of Pachuquismo to Mexican audiences. While Paz criticized “El Pachuco ha perdido toda su herencia: lengua, religión, costumbres, creencias” (the Pachuco has lost all its heritage: language, religion, customs, beliefs), he also described pachuques (the act of being a pachuco) as rebeldes instintivos (instinctive rebels).

Contrary to Paz's judgment of the Mexican-American subculture, the artist believes this rebeldía instintiva is pachuquismo's significant inheritance from working-class relatives. Llano en Llamas (Burning Plains) places pachuquismo as part of a legacy of movements of resistance. Reflecting on the work by scholars Nydia A. Martinez and Santamarina Gómez and referencing Juan Rulfo's Llano en Llamas, the print connects the rebeldía instintivo of Pachuquismo to the rebeldía alegre (cheerful) of the Zapatistas, and the rebeldía that lives in each working-class person affected by the industrialization and extractive capitalism of post-revolution Mexico. Llano en Llamas also records Popocatepetl's volcanic activity from the sky in February 2024.

Priscilla Hernandez, Hecho en Los Angeles (Made in Los Angeles), 2024. Serigraph. Edition of 50. 30 x 22 in. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art

An homage to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula, Hecho En Los Ángeles (Made in Los Angeles) is a Chicanx, surrealist view of our city. The artist Priscilla Hernandez calls upon modern and nostalgic elements of rebellion, pachucas and punks, collaging protest, resistance, and an emerging feminine light.

Yreina Cervantez, Danza Ocelotl (Jaguar Dance), 1983. Serigraph with mounted glitter. Edition of 60. 34 x 22 in. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art.

Self Help Graphics established its professional print program in 1983 and launched its first Atelier (print portfolio with 10-13 invited artists), including Yriena Cervantez. Yreina's Danza Ocelotl (Jaguar Dance) is a powerful representation of Chicana pride and power, evoking her Mesoamerican culture combined with contemporary fashion trends: layered hairstyle, red nails, and the intertwined band black bracelets. The self-portrait depicts the artist holding a mirror to her face, reflecting the moon, death, a child, and ollin (nahuatl for movement) as a third eye, while jaguars dance around the central figure. As part of the Chicana(o) art movement, Mexican-American art used art to uplift and celebrate their cultural roots oppressed by white social structures.

Judy Baca, Absolutely Chicana, 2009. Serigraph. Edition of 70. 26 x 20 in. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art.

Absolutely Chicana is a work about identity constructed to face a hostile environment for women and Chicanas in the 1950s. The image is a reinterpretation of a 1973 photograph of Judy Baca taken by Donna Deith for the "Chicana" show Las Venas de la Mujer (The Veins of Women) in Los Angeles. The portrait depicting a 'Pachuca' was part of a performance in which Baca transformed herself into the Pachuca using a mirror on a vanity table. Behind the mirror was the Chicana Triptych known as the Tres Marias, now a part of the Smithsonian Latino Collection. The image's relevance is underscored in the current climate of cultural ambivalence and threats to women's rights. Absolutely Chicana is a powerful stance against this continuing struggle.

Jaklin Romine, Roses Easter Sunday on Display (Rosas Domingo de Pascua en exhibición), 2025. Serigraph. 30 x 22 in. Photography by Oscar Jimenez. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art.

Roses Easter Sunday on Display is an homage to the artist’s grandmother, Gloria Ernestine Romine Hernandez, a strong willed, no-nonsense, woman that shared her love with her family. Born in the 1930s and raised in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles, Gloria lived in a household raised by a single mother and five siblings. Forced to become independent at an early age, Gloria and her siblings earned a living working in the orange fields in the summertime, and as a kid, she made her own clothes. Growing up and into her older years, Gloria never identified as a Pachuca. White passing, she never experienced the racism that others in her community faced, therefore, navigated life by blending in and stirring the ground to the minimum. However, her attitude as a passive observer changed witnessing her older sister’s abusive partners and more specifically, when she became a mother in her 20s, as she witnessed her children experience the racist banters because of their dark complexion. Her passivity shifted, becoming a protective force for her family, and through fashion, a passion she always carried, she created embellished suits that celebrated her cultural pride, deepening her connection to her roots. Roses Easter Sunday on Display is a glimpse of Gloria’s royal grandeur as seen through the artist’s eyes, and memorializing women’s strength and perseverance.

Melba Martinez, Stay Strapped, 2024. Serigraph. Edition of 50. 30 x 22 in. Photography by Oscar Jimenez. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art.

Through the work Stay Strapped, the artist Melba Martinez interrogates what self and community safety look like for brown queer bodies. With fascism on the rise, Martinez revisits the Pachuca as a symbol of protection for themselves and the people surrounding them, allowing the artist to bring forth different aspects of their practice together. The artist transformed herself into a tough-as-nails character through makeup, costume, and props, mirroring her resilient communities and their relentless fight against oppression. While playing with double entendre to bring a layer of lightness and comedy to the piece, Stay Strapped embraces the Phrase, “Not gay as in happy, but queer as in F*CK YOU!”

Sandra de la Loza, La Guapa, 2025. Serigraph. 30 x 22 in. Photography by Oscar Jimenez. Courtesy of Self Help Graphics & Art.

Sandra de La Loza's print centers on a cherished family heirloom, a photographic portrait of her mother, Hilda née Duran, as a teenager, that embodies the 1940s-era Pachuca style. Larger than life, she is positioned on a found archival photograph of an aerial landscape capturing the expanding the urban landscape where she came of age. This landscape was partially shaped by a war manufacturing economy in Los Angeles during and after World War II. The print, La Guapa, pays homage to the Pachuca that blossomed in a troubled, at times hostile environment. A testament to resilience, the iconic La Guapa flourishes alongside and parallel to the native's cattails, sycamores, frogs, and migratory birds that create a unique WWII urban ecology.

Pachucxs Revisited | Installation view at CSUN Art Galleries (West Gallery)

SUPPORT

Pachucxs Revisited is in partnership with CSUN Art Galleries. Funding for the exhibition is made possible by Pasadena Art Alliance. We extend our deepest gratitude to the Pasadena Arts Alliance, the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication, the Instructionally Related Activities Committee, and the Arts Council for CSUN for their generous support in making this exhibition possible. This exhibition was organized by Self Help Graphics & Art.