Creating Aztlán: Chicano Art, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Lowriding Across Turtle Island

By Dylan A.T. Miner

Book Overview

In lowriding culture, the ride is many things--both physical and intellectual. Embraced by both Xicano and other Indigenous youth, lowriding takes something very ordinary--a car or bike--and transforms it and claims it.

Using the idea that lowriding is an Indigenous way of being in the world, artist and historian Dylan A. T. Miner discusses the multiple roles that Aztl n has played at various moments in time, from the pre-Cuauhtemoc codices through both Spanish and American colonial regimes, past the Chicano Movement and into the present day. Across this "migration story," Miner challenges notions of mestizaje and asserts Aztl n, as visualized by Xicano artists, as a form of Indigenous sovereignty.

Throughout this book, Miner employs Indigenous and Native American methodologies to show that Chicano art needs to be understood in the context of Indigenous history, anticolonial struggle, and Native American studies. Miner pays particular attention to art outside the U.S. Southwest and includes discussions of work by Nora Chapa Mendoza, Gilbert "Mag " Luj n, Santa Barraza, Malaqu as Montoya, Carlos Cort z Koyokuikatl, Favianna Rodr guez, and Dignidad Rebelde, which includes Melanie Cervantes and Jes s Barraza.
With sixteen pages of color images, this book will be crucial to those interested in art history, anthropology, philosophy, and Chicano and Native American studies. Creating Aztl n interrogates the historic and important role that Aztl n plays in Chicano and Indigenous art and culture.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816530033
• ISBN13: 9780816530038
• Release Date: October 2014
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"