Santa Barraza paints bold representations of Nepantla, 
the Land Between. Her work depicts the historical, 
emotional, and spiritual land between Mexico and Texas, 
between the real and the celestial, and between present 
reality and the mythic world of the ancient Aztecs and Mayas. 
Thirty-four of her most powerful and characteristic works are 
offered in full color in this study of Barraza.
 

Over the last twenty-five years of her career, Barraza has 
explored what it means to be a Chicana. Using a variety of 
media, she has embarked on an artistic journey full of family 
portraits, watercolor dream scenes, mixed media artist books, 
and murals that harken back to a pre-Columbian past.
 

By tapping into pre-conquest symbols, personal memories, and 
traditional sacred art forms such as the retablo and the 
Codices, Barraza shows how Mexican artistic traditions have 
the power to nurture and sustain cultural identities on this 
side of the border. Her art has increasingly drawn on the 
colors and forms of Mesoamerica. Most recently, the Aztec 
Codices have offered her a symbolic way to claim her roots 
and to invoke much from the ancient ways of her ancestors.


She is not trapped in that past, though. She adapts these 
images by incorporating contemporary figures such as her own 
mother or labor leader Emma Tenayucca. Barraza depicts her 
own sister with a physical heart, representing a healing heart 
as she underwent open heart surgery, guarded by the image of 
the Virgen de Guadalupe floating on the horizon.


Scholars María Herrera-Sobek, Shifra M. Goldman, Tomás 
Ybarra-Frausto, and Dori Grace Udeagbor Lemeh 
contribute distinctive analyses of the forces that have 
shaped Barraza as a Chicana artist and the images and 
aesthetics that characterize her work. Their perspectives 
contribute to an understanding of the Chicano/a artists 
(including Barraza) who began their rise to prominence 
during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. 
Moreover, the text invites readers to view the Chicano/a as 
the "New American artist," suggesting that the elements of 
Barraza's painting are important not only to Chicanos/as, 
but to all Americans in our increasingly multicultural 
society.	
 
_________________________________________________________

SANTA C. BARRAZA teaches at Texas A&M-Kingsville and 
formerly taught at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work 
has been widely exhibited and has been published in a number 
of collections. Her vita reflects a career replete with 
awards, appearances and lectures, exhibitions, and 
publications.


MARíA HERRERA-SOBEK teaches Chicano Studies at the University 
of California, Santa Barbara, where she holds the Luis Leal 
Endowed Chair.

Number Five: Rio Grande/Río Bravo: Borderlands Culture 
and Traditions