A Chicano Art Testimonio: Children of the Sun
Isidro Zepeda
Medium: Spoken Word, Video, and Virtual Reality (2022)
Issues: Chicano Digital Art, Decolonial Design, and Indigenous Ontology
Project Links
Description
A Chicano Art Testimonio: Children of the Sun explores the borders of identity and place. In particular, the tensions involved in entering spaces where non-Eurocentric identities are not traditionally accepted, welcomed, and/or valued, resulting in a dual-consciousness state of being for many people of color. Through digital artwork, embodying an Indigenous ontology, I advocate for the decolonization of places as means to embody diverse modes of seeing, thinking, and being.
The ontological process of A Chicano Art Testimonio: Children of the Sun, represents a lifetime of decolonial work, which started with decolonizing my own mind. When my parents immigrated to the United States, they continued to do what they did in Mexico: survive. Naturally, they taught me to do the same. They taught me to adapt, shapeshift, and move in and out of systems as means to assimilate into this country. At the time, we did not understand the implications because what was most important was our survival. Much later, I realized that through this process, parts of my language, culture, and identity were slowly being recodified. I began reexamining my life experiences and the many ways I had been and was in the world, and I found that this process also influenced how I taught my classes: my ontology designed my pedagogy, which embodied my lived experiences.
I always kept Indigenous cosmology separate from other contexts, including professional ones. I realized that I was living two different worlds, two separate consciousnesses. Ni de aqui, ni de alla. In this critical moment, I found a way to bridge both consciousnesses–into a dual-consciousness–-to speak the truth of my experiences. I was able to transmute the tensions, energies, and sparks resulting from the clash of these two worlds into artwork. In this process I found my place. Art, then, for me, became an instrument of resisting, existing, and communicating that there are other ways of seeing, thinking, and being in the world. It has also given me a place for me to give a voice to parts of me that had not been given the opportunity to speak.
A Chicano Art Testimonio: Children of the Sun shares my personal journey of finding ways to give voice to parts of my identity that historically have not been accepted, welcomed, and/or valued. It also speaks towards a transformation and decolonization of our shared social realities and materialities, as means to accept, welcome, and value diverse ontologies and epistemologies, which have been historically devalued, excluded, and/or erased. Moreover, this artwork documents experiences I had in participating in various Indigenous rituals across the South West and Mexico for over nineteen years.
Bio
Isidro Zepeda is a Chicano artist born and raised in the Coachella Valley. He is also an Assistant Professor of English at Crafton Hills College, where he teaches first year writing, English as a Second Language Non-credit, and Chicana Literature courses. His pedagogy, artwork, language, and culture are intertwined and advocate for equitable realities for all people. He is married and has two children: Marisol Tonantzin and Eligio Mazatlzin.