VETERANAS AND RUCAS MAP POINTZ

Project Statement

Guadalupe Rosales (b.1980 Los Angeles) is a multidisciplinary artist best known for her archival projects, “Veteranas and Rucas” and “Map Pointz,” found on social media. The projects manifested in 2015 from the under/misrepresentation and historical erasure of Latinx communities in Southern California. These community-generated projects begin with an open invitation to various Latino communities to share personal images and memories that create visual narratives that celebrate identities and historicize subcultures. The archives explore ideas about how history and culture are framed and who does the framing. As a counterpoint, the archive celebrates, humanizes and reflects the positive and honest attributes of our shared culture. It creates a space for collective healing and storytelling and finds ways for new dialogue to emerge about youth culture in Southern California that would not exist otherwise.

Guadalupe’s studio also houses and preserves a physical archive of Chicano/Latino ephemera from the 1970s to the late-1990s, including but not limited to magazines, prison art and letters, posters and flyers from the Los Angeles underground backyard-party and rave scenes of the 1990s.

“For the past 6 years I have dedicated my life to preserving our history– from tracking down childhood friends to connecting with strangers with familiar stories. From looking at my own ephemera, shoeboxes full of letters and photos I had left in my mothers garage for over a decade to acquiring new ones from people I was fortunate to meet. I have also taken the responsibility to preserve these materials– they are personal and collective. It is satisfying and challenging, like piecing a puzzle together where I am also confronted by new discoveries.”–Guadalupe