Chicana/o Artivism: Judy Baca's Digital Work with Youth of Color

Part of the Volume on Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media Astounding digital murals have emerged from the minds and souls of Chicana artist Judy Baca and the youth of color who have collaborated with her over the past ten years. Their workspace is SPARC, the Social and Public Art Resource Center, founded by Baca in 1996 and dedicated to the creation and support of community and public art in Southern California. But the digital art they produce is not only located in SPARC -- it can be found in virtual installations globally, as well as on the walls of Los Angeles barrio housing projects and in the hybrid spaces of the Internet. We call their activity "digital artivism," a word that is itself a convergence between "activism" and digital "artistic" production. The digital artivism we find expressed through SPARC, we argue, is symptomatic of a Chicana/o twenty-first century digital arts movement. This digital artivist movement also advances the expression of a mode of liberatory consciousness that Chicana feminist philosopher Gloria Anzaldua calls la conciencia de la mestiza, i.e. the radical consciousness of a mixed race peoples. Chela Sandoval and Guisela Latorre call attention to this mode of digital artivism enacted by Baca and young people who are vested in the convergences between creative expression, social activism, and self-empowerment.