Yolanda López: Artist Provocateur

La Maestra Yolanda came to UCSB for three days in mid February, 2020. She met with students, faculty and community members informally and in the classroom. The main intention of her short residency was to record a retrospective interview conducted by Celia Herrera Rodríguez and Cherríe Moraga. The candor and the courage of Yolanda López' reflections were very moving for all those present. She shared some key formational moments of her personal & political history that had never been told publicly.

Her history of activism as an artist-organizer during el movimiento and the uncompromising avant-garde feminism of her “Guadalupe” series precedes — and provides unflinching Chicana feminist example to — present-day “artivists” movements.  

“It has been our long wish to be able to bring Yolanda López to this campus and also to this idea, wherein, after decades of teaching practice, we come to think of ourselves as “Maestras,” not only as Teachers, but also Artists. And, if there is anybody that we can say has set that precedent for us as Chicanas, who is indeed for us and the country, a Master Artist and Teacher, it would be Yolanda López.”

— Cherríe Moraga (Interview:  February 12, 2020)

After finishing high school and moving to San Francisco in 1968, Yolanda López became an organizer for the San Francisco State University Third World Strike. The movement recognized the cultures, politics and ethnicities that were present, but never acknowledged by academia. Her political activism and Chicano roots in Logan Heights, San Diego influenced her work as an artist when she received her B.A. in Painting and Drawing from San Diego State University. In 1979 she received her Masters of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego. As Kimberley Crenshaw was coining the term “intersectionality,” Maestra Yolanda’s art work was also creating conversation about the injustices within class, race, gender and queer identities.

After her return to the bay area — in San Francisco where she now resides — her art work and activism continued to be intersectional as it often commented beyond the Chicano movement and the second wave of feminism. Maestra Yolanda’s work became one of the artistic voices fighting to use art for women of color feminism.

“The Third World strike was the idea that there were many cultures, politics and ethnicities within the world, specially within the state college system and the curriculum; that there was nothing being taught about being Native American and very few Black Studies . . . there was no discussion of any of the contributions of Black History, we are still beginning to discover things, there’s a cadre of scholarship that is woking on it . . . but also Latinos, Mexican Americans.” — Yolanda López

(Interview:  February 12, 2020)

Maestra Yolanda visits UCSB

LMC wanted as many people of our community — from the bay area to New York — to join the interview so we set up a livestream video to our YouTube Channel.

In the late 60s, Maestra Yolanda became involved in The Movement for Los Siete, to free a group of young men, mainly Central Americans who had been unjustly accused of murdering a policeman. A movement emerged from that, and she became very involved in the print publication BASTA YA! The most interesting aspect of this period is that many of the images created by Yolanda were never signed by her. For her that is the measure of what it is to be an artist: a collective effort.

“Whether Reagan was your president or Trump was your president or whether your mother was part of the working class — as my mother did doing laundry in a hotel— all the things that happened at one point in time is the context in which your art functions. One of the things that I recently became aware of is that the Guadalupe pieces, which I did in 1978 were pure research. No one was talking about Guadalupe at that time except as a sacred Roman Catholic icon and a Mexican one.”

— Yolanda López

(Interview: February 12, 2020) 

“One of the things I think is so attractive about the “Running Guadalupe” is that she has expression. There is joy, there is exuberance . . . Even within the larger anti-war movement, there was no real joy.

The idea of fighting the revolution is fierce . . . The “Illegal Alien” is a gift. I found that a lot of men really react very strongly to [it] because it’s a man who’s got sort of an Aztec, indigenous garb, but he has an expression . . . [E]ven within the imagery of the whole pantheon of our heroes, whether it was Cesar Chavez, Emiliano Zapata, or Pancho Villa (the list goes on), they were all very stoic looking. So in that expression I wanted to portray . . . it felt like a feminist gift given to the movement, giving men an expression [of] anger, self-righteousness. But not only that — What does he have in his hand? He has . . . immigration plans. I think that’s the real gift of feminism at that time; not only the representation of women, but transferring this over to how men are portrayed.” — Yolanda López

(Interview:  February 12, 2020)

A mosaic of Maestra Yolanda’s work, highlighting her personal and political history.

Our beloved Maestra passed on September 3, 2021. It is a great loss to her beloved son and daughter-in-love, her chosen familia en la misión of San Francisco and to the extended Chicanx and Arts community. We are so honored that she blessed us with this interview. Yolanda López, presente!

Watch the Full Interview