By Melody Li
Artist Salomón Huerta speaks at UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design, and Architecture Museum.
With one idea inspired by racial profiling, Los Angeles painter Salomón Huerta’s career took off. He received national attention while completing his MFA at UCLA in the late 90s for his portraits of the back of people’s heads.
“I wanted other people to experience what it was like being a suspect,” Huerta said.
In a presentation last week at UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design, and Architecture Museum, Huerta gave audience members a look into personal events in his life that shaped his artistic projects.
“Growing up in housing projects in East Los Angeles, we would always get pulled over for just going to the store at night so the idea of being a suspect was very familiar,” said Huerta.
He chose models that had short hair to be gender neutral so that an average viewer could connect to the drawings regardless of gender.
Huerta also shared stories about his late father and how he remembers his dad in his artwork. Living in one of the most violent neighborhoods in the country at the time, his dad kept a gun with him all the time to protect the family.
“When I was five, my dad would take me to the border at Tijuana so that he could strap his gun to my shorts and cross the border without them finding the gun because he knew they wouldn’t check me,” Huerta said.
“Untitled”, 2016, by Salomón Huerta.
In his teenage years, Huerta would bring snacks to his dad and placed them on his father’s nightstand where he kept his gun. After his father passed away, Huerta created a series of paintings that featured a gun next to various foods.
“They’re basically portraits of my dad, but using his guns to talk about him,” said Huerta.
Huerta stressed that representation is crucial in art. His paintings are inspired by his personal life, but also represent his Mexican American culture.
“When you go to museums, there’s mostly representations of white models. I wanted to create representation for Latinos and African Americans,” he said.
Two of Huerta’s paintings, both portraits of Chicano models, are currently on display at the Art, Design, and Architecture Museum. His paintings are part of ¡Chicanismo!, which is wrapping up this December after a year-long exhibit.
“Las Tres Novelas de mi Vida”, 1994
¡Chicanismo! is a small portion of Chicano Art collector Tomás Sanchez’s collection, that he began compiling during the Chicano movement in the early 1980s. The collection was mounted as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Chicano/a Studies Department at UCSB.
Melody Li is a third-year Communication major at UC Santa Barbara. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.