Desire Lines: Chicanx Artists' Engagement With Environmental Justice In The Borderlands

This thesis uses the artworks of five Chicanx artists or groups to connect the theories rasquachismo and domesticana to environmental justice in aesthetics and sensibility. In terms of aesthetics, this is largely seen in the accumulation and exuberant display of saved or recycled objects. In terms of sensibility, the artists engage with an Indigenous ancestry that equates human life with that of land. This project is separated into three major sections. Section one grounds the argument by examining work by Amalia Mesa-Bains, as well as exploring what constitutes rasquachismo and domesticana. Section two is focused on artworks that engage in models of Indigenous ecology in the Borderlands. The artists examined here are the collaborative Desert ArtLAB and the duo rafa esparza and Rebeca Hernandez. Section three is focused on the uplifting of human lift in the Borderlands, a space where ecological devestation reflects the treatment that many who have ties to it receive. The artists in this section include Xandra Ibarra, Delilah Montoya, and Orlando Lara. Ultimately, these are all artists who work from a Bordelands consciousness and seek to take care of the land, as well as those inhabit it, which is also central to the aims of environmental justice.