In 1996, the self-taught photographer and film artist Laura Aguilar, then in her 30s, positioned her naked body in the rocky desert landscape of southern California and took a series of self-portraits. The black-and-white series Nature Self-Portrait (1996) juxtaposes the land and the artist’s flesh: large, brown, queer, female. It asks viewers to focus their attention on the artist’s body and see the often invisible and marginal reality of someone like Aguilar. Born to a Mexican Irish mother and Mexican American father, Aguilar struggled throughout her life with the complexity of her ethnic and sexual identity, her obesity, her auditory dyslexia, and clinical depression.
“Aguilar’s work not only appeals to the Chicanx community,” says Cesáreo Moreno, chief curator of the National Museum of Mexican Art. “It speaks to anyone thinking about and dealing with complex identities.” He adds that “her photography has a very special honesty. She’s not trying but rather doing. She is honest so you cannot help but engage with it as a viewer.”
The exhibition also includes two short videos where Aguilar casts a critical eye upon herself. The Body and Talking About Depression, both from 1995, are confessional, extremely intimate, and honest. Aguilar talks about her emotional state, her relationship with her mother, her role as an artist, and her suicidal thoughts.
Through 8/18: Tue-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th, 312-738-1503, nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org. F
