The Taller Tupac Amaru is the art collective I'm a part of and which I co-founded with my best friend, Jesus Barraza, who I met in college around 1996. I'm proud to announce one of the most in-depth interviews to depth of our crew! We are getting major love this year and busting out poster after poster. Although we are a small group of three - Melanie Cervantes, Jesus and myself - we are actively producing work in support of various struggles around the country. Last month we had the honor to be named as the Best of the Bay Artist Collective by the East Bay Express.
We been staying busy supporting the grassroots work in Arizona - a few weeks ago Melanie and Jesus helped organize a 12 hour print-a-thon in Los Angeles! In May, I helped produce two posters for the battle against SB 1070 and since June, have been staying occupied with a residency and some commissions. We hardly sleep!
We absolutely believe in the power of cooperative action so we are also a part of a national art collective - JustSeeds.org. Our two colleagues, Josh MacPhee and Icky, interviewed us for their inaugural issue of Signal is a full color, 140 page book about international political art, graphics, and culture. In their blog entry, they describe the reasons for wanting to produce Signal: (read full entry)
We wanted to highlight current artists who we thought were doing compelling work, and also to draw connections to the rich history of art and culture associated with resistance and social movements. We especially wanted to share some of the incredible graphics and cultural documents we've seen from other struggles around the world, as most North Americans suffer from a myopia about events taking place beyond our borders.
This is by far one of the most thorough interviews of our collective ever (we sat for like 3 hours talking). It even has some gossip facts about quirky sides to our personalities and our history together, so be sure to get your copy today. We also curse a lot! Click here to order
Here is one of my favorite lines from the interview. I am talking about the importance of mentoring young people of color:
I met a lot of the people who mentored me to be an activist; they reached out to me when I was an early teenager. I was really angry, and they helped me funnel my rage. It helped form my political ideology to be a freedom fighter. There’s ways to inspire people to do that. When I look back on this, I saw some men of color, but I never saw women of color as freedom fighters. So when I go out and talk, I’m looking to reach out to those young girls that are feeling very insecure, or the system is telling them how ugly they are, all this shit. My goal is to help them love themselves.
Some sneak peaks of the issue! (click for close ups)
Printmakers Rule! Click here to order
