Marcelina Gonzales

Marcelina Gonzales (born 1989) is an American visual artist from Brownsville, Texas.^[1][2]

According to Gonzales, her work focuses on her identity as a young Chicana growing up in a neighborhood that is often marginalized and misunderstood.^[1]

Early life and education

Gonzales states that much of her work is created to reflect and reconstruct her childhood and personal experiences in Brownsville.^[1] Brownsville sits on the southernmost tip of Texas, making it a border-town for the Mexican-American border.^[3] Therefore, artistically, Gonzales exemplifies the mingling of these Mexican and American cultures, attitudes, and traditions through an authentic Chicana point of view.^[3] She provides a feminist perspective, one that examines sexism, societal expectations for women, traditional gender roles, and female objectification, to address the external challenges that accompany her perceived identity, ability, and class.^[3] Gonzales had trouble accepting and loving herself and, as a result, developed debilitating depression and anxiety.^[4] She says that she turned to art as a form of therapy which allowed her to pursue empowerment in regards to her gender and cultural identity.^[4]

Gonzales went on to study at the University of Texas at Brownsville and received a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts in 2013.^[2] After completing her bachelor's degree, her primary medium became resin collage.^[1] Some of her work takes the form of "puzzling-assemblages", a term she uses to refer to the fact that these pieces can become two-dimensional or three-dimensional depending on where her audience may stand.^[4][5]

Career

In 2020, amidst the Coronavirus outbreak, Gonzales participated in collaborative work with Fields Projects to launch an online initiative called “Corona Care+”.^[6] Field Projects is an online project space dedicated to uplifting emerging artists.^[7] Now serving as a time capsule, the initiative offered the support and advice from artists as they navigated the pandemic.^[6] Here, Gonzales revealed that, outside of art, she works at an agency that provides home health care coordination to elderly and disabled patients^[8] and shared an oil tinted resin collage, Don’t eat pistachios in the dark, that she completed during the pandemic.^[9]

As an artist, Gonzales has exhibited her art throughout Texas, California, and New York as well as in Germany, Hungary, and Dubai.^[4][10] She uses her work to challenge the preconceptions of what it means to be Chicana^[11] and the social, political, economic, religious, and sexual role of women living in contemporary America.^[12] This can be seen in the GIRLS will be GIRLS: An All-Women Art Exhibition^[13] that she personally curated and in her Object collection.^[14] Particularly, in her Object collection, she strives to eliminate the androcentric expectation that is so prevalent in today’s America by redefining and reclaiming the female position in it.^[15] She has also used resin collages to create snapshots of her memories growing up in Brownsville^[1] which can be seen in her Valley Girl Collection.^[14]

Notable works

• No Class Tomorrow, Bro! in Images of Power Exhibit, a digital piece that depicts the events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017^[16]
• Tiempo del Vals at Sunrise Mall in Between Two Worlds Exhibit and Valley Girl Collection.^[14] A piece that is oil tinted and resin collaged on wood that depicts a quinceñera and her court of honor. This piece can move from two dimensional to three dimensional.^[5]
• Let's see what that mouth can do! in GIRLS will be GIRLS: An All-Women Art Exhibition^[13] and Valley Girl collection^[14]