John Deamond / Sources

Sandra de la Loza is a Los Angeles native who works as an artist, activist, and educator. Her primary focus is based around a personal history and its relation to “hegemonic constructions” that amount to a social history. Though de la Loza’s art is focused on herself and issues effecting her, it holds the potential for a global meaning (de la Loza 2).

Though her work is based in questioning the current hegemony (both Anglo and Chicano), Sandra de la Loza embraces traditional forms of representation. She sees no problem with this, seeing herself as a member of a collective consciousness as well as an individual. In addition to accepting traditional forms on their merit, de la Loza also uses those forms to question traditional archetypes (Sternad 1).

De la Loza moves between different media – from photography and digital media to installation to public interventions – depending on what will best suit her intentions (de la Loza 2). However, she is often drawn to photography as a democratic means: it is accessible and is what people use to depict themselves. At the same time it holds her interest by filling certain archetypes of what one “should” be. In one work, de la Loza erases the figures in a family snapshot and replaces them with graffiti. This changes the representation while also deconstructing the basis of photography. There is a tension between the precise, naming nature of a photograph and its ability to reproduce a time and place (Sternad 1). De la Loza finds her inspiration for this in the things left unsaid in he family photographs. She understands the conflicts beneath the surface of this attempt at an “ideal” 1950s family, and wants to bring that understanding to the photograph. By using photography, she is able to explore the visual language created by her family to cope with their lives (Mak 1).

The Pocho Research Society, Sandra de la Loza’s creation, is a fake historic society that focuses on the hidden history of LA (Sternad 1). It is based around a collective of Chicano artists, activists and historians from the LA area. They see “history as a battleground of the present, a location where hidden & forgotten selves hijack & disrupt the oppression of our moment” (de la Loza 4). The PRS’s “Operation Invisible Monument” memorialized the hidden past of Chicanos in LA through educational plaques. This theoretically allows people to see the past through fresh eyes and question the dominant spin on history. The plaques all commemorate places that have since changed, by being destroyed or becoming something new (de al Loza 4). Their other main work, the October Surprise, created a space for installation and interactive art. Focused on its location in Highland Park in LA, the October surprise has as its goal to stop gentrification in the area through grassroots action and create a micro-politics to allow the town to control its own destiny (October Surprise 1).

De la Loza also helped begin Arts in Action, a non-profit organization dedicated to combining art into social justice movements of southern California. The group brings together individuals and organizations in a sort of mediated skill-share, while also bringing together ideas and funding groups (AIA 1).

I find inspiration in Sandra de la Loza’s work because of its basis in personal and cultural history. She sets out to reveal new things about her subject, but is not afraid to revert to old forms of representation to do so. We are both attracted to the “democratic” function of photography while also gravitating toward non-gallery installation because of its interactive quality and ability to reach a wider audience. I also find myself inspired by her ideas of archetypes in photography. If photographs can reveal a certain time and place by their visual qualities, then these qualities can be manipulated to alter the time and space, access all times and spaces, or exist in none.