The New Inspirational Movement

Most of these hip-hop fools out there make claims about being hustlers when in reality they’re just taking a fashionable pose. Priscilla Ceballos is the real deal Holyfield. If you don’t know who she is, Priscilla Ceballos cold got ill so her daughter could score some free Hannah Montana concert tickets. She entered her daughter into an essay contest to win a free pair of tickets to see Hannah Montana and won by writing that her father was a soldier who had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. The trouble was that none of it was true, her father was alive and well-living in the next town over. When Priscilla was finally busted she and her daughter lost the tickets and she became the most hated woman in the western world. Homegirl defended herself by saying that no one ever specified that the essay for the contest had to be true.

Priscilla Ceballos may be a dumbass but her ass ain’t dumb, of course she knew what was going on all along. What makes her a true hustler is that she will stick to her story of “not knowing the essay had to be true” until the bitter end. Some people will no doubt call her delusional but in the hood that’s called some fuckin’ hustling. To the rest of the world she may be a villain but I’m canonizing her as a saint of the ghetto: Our Lady of Hustlers.

Since being busted for the fake essay Priscilla Ceballos has made numerous media appearances to clear her name. With these interviews she’s done a lot more harm than good and exposed herself to even more ridicule. Many blogs outside of Latino culture are both confounded and fascinated by Priscilla Ceballos’ bad chola style. “Doesn’t she know how fucked up those sharpie eyebrows look?” they all seem to wonder. The motivations of chola fashion still elude the mainstream but with her appearance on the Today Show she has become America’s most recognizable chola.

I don’t really take issue with people challenging the basic humanity of Priscilla Ceballos or at least her qualifications as a mother. What I have found deeply disturbing is the amount of racist bile that has been thrown her way. One look at her Bebo Profile and you can get a good sampling of some of the racist rants that she’s no doubt confronting on a daily basis. Most of them shits call her out for being Mexican, even though her profile picture is clearly all about her being Salvadoran (Holla at my Central Americans). The truth is, whenever one of us fucks up publicly it becomes baggage for all of us not just for Salvadorans, Mexicans, or Chicanos (except for maybe Brazilians…Tudo Bem!). Despite my anger at Priscilla Ceballos I am even more offended at the racist responses to her choices and that is why I chose to include a tear forming on her eye as well as text from the aforementioned Bebo profile behind her.

Orale!

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This month…

Hunting the Now/ Cazando El Momento by The Counter Narrative Society
Begin at the corner of 14th and Valencia Streets

For this SAT. Dec. 1 - 11am-5pm
To download a map locating this project from GROUNDED? go to http://soex.org/Event/152.html

Game will be available at various venues and online after Dec. 1 at: TheCounterNarrativeSociety.org

Hunting the Now is a bilingual and peculiar treasure hunt that intends to divulge unique but ordinary features of the present social-urban development of Mission and Valencia Streets between 14th and 24th Streets. Brochures containing map, instructions and clues to the unique destinations we have gathered will be available at Southern Exposure.

Cazando el Momento es un juego bilingüe artístico de encontrar tesoros que divulga cualidades únicas pero cotidianas del presente desarrollo social-urbano de las calles Mission y Valencia entre la calle 14 y 24. Afiches con mapa, instrucciones y pistas de estas destinaciones inusuales estarán disponibles en el local de Southern Exposure.

Hunting the Now is part of Southern Exposure and Intersection for the Arts’ GROUNDED? 1st Annual Juried Public Art/Urban Interventions Day. For more information about GROUNDED? including the 16th Annual Juried Exhibition, 5-week Performance Series, and 7th Annual Film/Video Screening please visit soex.org or theintersection.org.

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My work is inspired by the psychological impact that mass media- and mass production have on our society. I am especially interested to re-make those mass produced objects that seem no longer relevant to our society and transform them into new realities, changing our memories and our perceptions of them.
Because my work is interactive it gives the viewer an active role on the decision whether to be removed or not from a reality to which they have become accustomed. My work engages them to reflect on our relationship with material and culture.

For the Chicana/0 Biennial I am showing Osiloscopiando from the Recycling Junk series.

I hope you will enjoy it!

Daniela

www.danielast.com

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For the last month or so I have been working on my upcoming installation and exhibition entitled “IN TIE ONE WE TRUST” to be held at the bluedahlia’s Studio gallery, 3435 Cesar Chavez, #315 in San Francisco, and opening on August 19th, 2007, 4 - 9 pm. The exhibition is on view through August 31st by appointment only. For more information call 415.828.4418. Here are photos documenting my progress as i create the installation almost all from scratch and mostly using recycled materials. Thanks to the Sanitary Fill/Norcal Company, the SF Garbage Dump for the Spectator newspaper rack, the fake flowers, the Christmas lights, some of the wood, and most of the spray paint i used. A special thank you also goes out to Paula Goodman and Express Service Signs in Cincinatti for all of her wonderful recycled sticker vinyl scraps. And of course, I want to thank the anonymous donor who made all the copies of the “TIE warning” stickers from the original TIE made so long ago. Thank you. You know who you are, my other hero. A final thanks goes to Julie Blankenship of bluedahlia’s Studio gallery for hosting my show. I love you, Julie!

For months, the parking lot outside my apartment remained empty… preceding the new p.c. raza mural (also now in progress since these photos have been taken) and revamped parking lot, so i decided to make use of the space and spend some time making art outside in the nice weather and the urban landscape.

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