The New Inspirational Movement

“Believing “pastel on paper 45″x55″ 2008

What are our fantasies as Indigenous/Multicultural/Mulatto/Mestizo Peoples/Artists?

The history I received in public schools, the Hollywood sitcoms, tv dramas, and movies that I watched, the museums that visited, mostly iconicized and exotified Native Peoples….I enjoyed this portrayal because it mythologized us. They made us look beautiful, spiritual, strong, but always ultimately defeated, which I resented deeply. To continue seeing one’s culture as defeated, is destructive to one’s consciousness and self esteem. This was my Indigenous Reality.

Looking back at my previous art endeavors in art school, I drew and painted about my Indigenous Reality: oppressive government laws concerning women and native peoples, reproductive rights, and failed relationships with boyfriends. My Indigenous Reality was hopeless and depressing. I continued working this way for over 10 years. I think part of why I painted such things was because I couldn’t be motivated to paint unless I feel. And so the topics that I chose to paint about in those days, deeply effected me. It wouldn’t be until the late 90’s that I began to paint from my Indigenous Fantasies.
It started with the LMA Series (Little Miss Attitude Series).

Wonderwoman LMA 8.5″x11″ graphite on paper study

LMA Series was an exploration of behaviors of empowerment. The cartoon has always been a creature typical of emotion and so are women. In our chatty conversations with one another, we expose so much about ourselves, go in depth about relationships with others, go into minute details about sex, love….When we aren’t conversing, our quiet moments are psychic, still attentive to each other’s emotions, knowing what the other feels, because we collectively know what makes a woman happy and what makes her bleed…So intoxicating is this awareness, that my research was already done. All I had to do was paint. And so I did 16 paintings, 8 studies, 8 paintings trying to understand what attitude was as a factor of empowerment in us ladies…This was the beginning of Indigenous Fantasies because I was painting what what my ideal of a woman was.

Desiring 28″x40″ pastel on black paper 2007

The New Series that I’m working on, The Masked Woman Series, is a continuation to paint Indigenous Fantasies. The ski mask has always been a campy western symbol of thuggery from 1970’s police dramas like Charlies Angels which I used to watch as a pre teen. But the Indigenous Reality gave the ski mask a symbol of real struggle from the Zapatistas to Hamas: the struggle to own your own land, to grow crops, raise and hunt your own food, get a job, own your own business, to have casinos, to raise families, a cultivation and love for existance. (Isn’t this the American Dream, or should I say the Indigenous Dream? Isn’t this “pulling ourselves by our bootstraps”, that term used by those who have already made it, and use to scold those who are lazy and don’t like to work….)The ski mask, a symbol of struggle, protection of identity, preservation of a culture. It is my Indigenous Fantasy to draw a woman in lingerie with a ski mask.

The Descension 33″x66″ pastel on paper 2008

The Indigenous Fantasy is a Hopeful Reality for it allows me to dream. Dreaming is part of my indigenous subconscious. I am more interested in my dreams than the struggle. Sorry, too much struggle keeps me from realizing my dreams. At some point, I need to take a break and really imagine what my future, my destiny would look like if I weren’t struggling so damn hard. What would happen if I stopped struggling, if I just drifted for a while?

Isis Rodriguez