San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
GRISELDA ROSAS
Tijuana native’s mixed-media collages examine the merging of Spanish and indigenous cultures in Mexico
It has already been a busy year for Griselda Rosas. ■ Her work is on display across the county, at Balboa Park’s San Diego Art Institute, the Oceanside Museum of Art and the Lux Art Institute in Encinitas. She is now preparing to open a show in May at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Gallery in La Jolla with her three 2019 San Diego Art Prize co-finalists. And in October, she will have a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in conjunction with a retrospective on artist Yolanda López. ■ “No one knew about me. I don’t know what happened,” said Rosas, who is also currently a resident at Bread & Salt’s studio space in Seaport Village.
Rosas, who was born and raised in Tijuana, examines Mexican culture and looks at identity, gender mores and ethnicity. Her work is described as post-colonial, casting a spotlight on the often-violent merging of the Spanish and indigenous cultures.
Conquistadores and men wearing capriotes, the pointy Klu Klux Klan-like garb of Catholic brotherhoods, are juxtaposed with native landscapes and indigenous people. But far from being dark, these pieces are bright,
colorful mixed-media collages combining painting and stitchery.
“I find joy in making these drawings,” she said.
Some pieces are on paper with watercolor and machine stitchery. Others are on fake ostrich leather and partially hand-stitched.
“I like the aesthetics (of the faux leather). It’s beautiful. It also reminds me of my childhood; of the drug dealers with ostrich leather boots,” said Rosas, who now lives in Chula Vista.
She said she has been doing these pieces for years just for fun, inspired by a book she found in Oaxaca of primitive drawings done by native people on order from the Spaniards. One of her pieces has a young girl carrying a turkey, her face obscured with stitchery, implying that she is just one more child, much like the children today at the border, who seem faceless to passers-by.
“It’s heartbreaking to see the kids at the border,” said Rosas, who had always considered herself primarily a sculptor, the medium in which she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from San Diego State University.
In 2017, she presented her stitched paintings to the Bread & Salt gallery in Barrio Logan for a show.
“I was a little embarrassed. I thought they might think they looked like old-lady paintings, kitsch,” Rosas said. She was assured that they far from tacky, and they were added to the show and quickly sold. “I was really surprised people were so receptive to them,” she said.
Rosas grew up in a creative household. Her father drew and painted watercolors as a hobby, her mother and aunts embroidered, and she says her younger sister is an amazing artist.
Rosas didn’t think of becoming an artist until she took a ceramics class at City College. She is now an adjunct professor, teaching painting at SDSU, and she leads watercolor classes for older adults.
“I’m fascinated with watercolor. It’s often overlooked,” she said.
While her multilayered work, which often starts with watercolor, has been a big focus as she gets ready for the Museum of Contemporary Art show, the exhibition will also include her sculptures. Blue and white tiles, an aesthetic from Europe that was absorbed by the indigenous population, have been incorporated into large slingshots, violent objects that are also a toy. Made to look like artifacts, the slingshots tie together the past and the present in a playful way, Rosas said.
The two-dimensional pieces, she said, are more academic, while sculpting is more intuitive to her.
“Art is like a process,” she said. “I can’t think about my life without doing it. It’s the only thing I know how to do.”