IlliciText Chicanx—To Exist in the Vanishing

Arte y Acción

Abstract

This photo essay emerged in November 2023 as a response to the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) initiative to demolish the building housing the Department of Chicana/o Studies, lovingly named La Casita. As a collective exhibit, IlliciText Chicanx illustrates how Chicanx populations at UNM live within a spatial imaginary we call “the vanishing.” The vanishing refers to forms of erasure at college campuses that minimize the curricular, intellectual, cultural, and community programming nurtured in ethnic studies departments. The concept of the vanishing also addresses UNM’s commodification of notions of inclusivity and representation of Latinx students to support a vision of education premised on our disavowal.

To amplify the paradoxical nature of the vanishing in the context of UNM, the state of New Mexico, and our nation, the La Casita Collective—a cadre of students, staff, faculty, and community members aiming to save La Casita—engaged in art and social action involving the redevelopment of the university and surrounding private property. Demolition sites and desolate lots serve as the cultural landscape for the photo essay. Juxtaposing themselves with the modernization process, students and community members curated their clothing and makeup, utilizing items from the Casita as props to highlight the creative artistry of Chicanx peoples through posing, playing, and claiming space. Through IlliciText Chicanx, students, staff, faculty, and community members showed solidarity with the Chicana/o Studies Department and literally and figuratively modeled the cultural, political, and intellectual importance of space and place for Chicana/os.

Photography by Évolet Aceves, Jose B. Martinez, Nick Daniel Rivas, Valerie Chavez, Rebecca Martinez-Baca, Yolanda Torres-Martinez, Irene Vásquez, Maggie Washburne, and John Welch.