Artist, Xavier Cázares Cortéz, is a self-taught artist from San Bernardino, CA. Born in Yuma, Arizona, Cortéz’s family moved to La Quinta, CA where he was raised. He is an artist, curator, and educator. He has held many shows across the United States. His upbringing, educational background, and military backgrounds have differed from the usual career path, but nevertheless he has created various exhibitions shown in museums and galleries. Some of his exhibitions include The Frame that Frames the Framing Frame, Affirmations and Proclamations, Death of the REAL: Where the Flesh Meets the Spirit World, Altered Altar for the Altered Alacrity, Man of Letters, I Haven’t Seen Her in 108 years, and MAKE IT [K] NEW. Cortéz’s most recent exhibition, SOMETHING about NOBODY knowing ANYTHING for sure, was shown at
Photographs courtesy of Xavier Cázares Cortéz
For more information visit Xavier Cázares Cortéz’s website http://printprosprinting.com/sites/xaviercazarescortez/home.html
I had the opportunity to speak with Xavier Cázares Cortéz and here is what he has to say about his life and work as an artist. This interview is preliminary and should be considered as an opportunity to learn more about an artist and his heart. Nonetheless, there is much more to his art. A special thank you to artist Xavier Cazares Cortez for taking some time off his busy schedule.
Question: What were some important events in your childhood that affected your career choice?
Answer: That’s a heavy question because, in fact, in many ways, it has manifested in my art and it isn’t until – you know – a very, very conscious reflection I am able to see those manifestations. Certainly, one of those is through my use of objects, for sure, and a number of other ways. I would have to say – you know – through the use of materials, and how I manipulate them is probably one of the most outward ways
Question: What made you realize that you wanted to become an artists and/or pursue an art career? How and why?
Answer: Sure, that happened many years ago and it has been awhile since I have given that question a good deal of thought. I had always enjoyed making things, drawing, and the earliest memories that I have of consciously liking art is probably as young as third grade because I remember receiving – I remember clearly receiving – a book on Pablo Picasso from my third grade teacher for having participated in a bailable because I am the product of a bilingual education up until the fifth grade, but there was this baile folklórico performances that we did and we all received gifts and mine was a book on Pablo Picasso. I remember cherishing that book and drawing things out of it and I remember copying, etc. I remember being fascinated by some of those images which to me were novelty that I had never seen images rendered quietly. Going back to my childhood, I actually grew up on a ranch in an unincorporated area of Riverside county. Our closest neighbors were about a mile away, so I didn’t grow up with neighbors, I grew up with my brothers and sisters and growing up with three channels of TV, which we didn’t really watch all the time. We did a lot of other things because it was a huge family that I come from. I come from a large Mexican family and I remember being fascinated with that book [Pablo Picasso]. Through the years, I continued making art and it wasn’t until I was back in – until I was in high school – that I took art classes like ceramics as electives. I remember I really enjoyed that. I wasn’t what you would refer to as a really well adapted academically. I think this is germane to the larger point of the public education system and how there is so much focus placed on reading and arithmetic as the two essential subjects – you know – to glim who are the kids that are going to put out, etc., and the truth of the matter is that the fact that I was not a very academically forward student sort of disenfranchised me as I was going through high school and not being - real, real – such a great student because – you know – it didn’t appeal to me, but I remember when I spent time with my cermatics and my other classes, I quite enjoyed them and it brought back a rush of all those feelings – when I was much younger, I was able to make art, etc. So, having said all of that I joined the air forces immediately after high school and it was during my time in the air force that I began to reflect on my life if you will. I – you know – began having those questions. What am I going to do with my life? Although I had a great time at the air force, I traveled plenty, I lived abroad, I knew that it wasn’t my thing to sit behind a desk – was not my thing – I really began to think what it really was I wanted to do and I would still make art and still do things. But I never thought about it seriously, up until when I began thinking about my future and its like an epiphany that comes to you that I wanted to make art. This is back in the mid-eighties – you know – that was a while ago. It just wasn’t a common thing from where I came, my upbringing, etc. to have considered art as a viable career, but I decided at that point that from that day forward I decided that I was going to make art because that is what made me happy. After my air force time, I did in fact continue moving in that direction of creating, making, [and] even with the idea of having some commercial viability. I still continued to make art and here I am with some twenty years later still making art and it’s something that just doesn’t go away.
Photographs courtesy of Xavier Cázares Cortéz
Question: Going off your air force time, what type of art did you start making while in service? Did your art include posters, or drawings?
Answer: You know I appreciate that question because it wasn’t the traditional art. I think that is one of the reasons that I mentioned the timeframe back in the mid-eighties because aside from the fact that where I grew up – you know – I found that my upbringing, my background. I was living in Japan at that time. My art was [consisted] more of performances, interventions, movements, actions, that kind of thing and I really didn’t have a very strong background in terms of having studied art because other than having taken some studio art classes in high school. I had never studied. I had never studies art history. So, I really didn’t know about movements and art parse. I hadn’t really studied the performance art movements or the minimalist artists, or the conceptual artist.
Question: Why do you consider yourself a self-taught audience? Did you attend a higher institution of education after your return home from the air forces?
Answer: You know that I consider myself a self-taught artist. I actually resisted getting a degree because I believed that I would contaminate my ideas with academia. Wait let me fast forward some because I actually didn’t go get a college degree until the late nineties and didn’t complete my degree until a couple of years ago because I really resisted academia. I resisted academia because I was already – from the time I came back to the late eighties and the nineties – I was already making art. I had been teaching and working in museums now for fifteen years plus. I was teaching art even before I had a degree and even before I started going to school – well went back to school. So I was sort of resisting getting a degree because I believed that it was going to somehow change or contaminate – I use the word contaminate – because that’s in essence the way that I feel what it would have done to my art.
Photographs courtesy of Xavier Cázares Cortéz
Question: How many years were there between the time that you started and finished your degree?
Answer: Well, I actually started, going to the university, in 1997. My first son was born and there was a four, five – six year period in between because I actually didn’t get my degree until three years ago. There was a lapse; there was a lapse of about seven years in between.
Question: During that time what were you working on? Overall, what have you worked on throughout your career?
Answer: I was an arts education program manager and developing arts educational programs for different museums that I have worked in. I have worked in the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles, and the county museum here in San Bernardino. I have developed programs, taught workshops, lectured, etc., for numerous other museums in California including the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, etc. So, I was working and working on my art because concurrently being a practicing artist I also am an educator, an advocate, and a curator.
Question: What education institution did you receive your degree?
Answer: Cal State San Bernardino (CSUSB), but it is interesting and I share this with you. There are some organizations etc., which sometimes really focus strongly on a person’s degree. I never like referring to my degree because again the fact that I am pretty much a self-taught artist in every sense of the word. I didn’t gain the knowledge that I had or my practice as a result of having attended the university. This is funny because when we specifically look at my education at the university I was able to use all of my projects that I was working on, as a practicing artist, as the basis for my assignments. So essentially, I did not have to take; I did not take classes as students normally would. I basically met with professors and I basically discussed the projects I was working on and that was what constituted the basis for my degree.
Photographs courtesy of Xavier Cázares Cortéz
Question: What are your thoughts on education?
Answer: That’s the dichotomy from which I suffer. I am in education and I am an art believer in education, but I am an art believer in quality education. For the last fifteen years, in playing with my career, I have developed a curriculum Diogenes which are more authentic teaching methodology than the ones that are currently in practice. I do believe in situated learning. I believe in free-choice learning methodology. I believe in multiple intelligences. I believe in socratic teaching approaches. These are the methodologies that I have been working on for many, many years. I have presented in the National Art and Education Association, conferences with other colleagues throughout the country because I do believe that the current methodologies – and I say current in the sense of the last couple of decades – that they are not very authentic learning approaches or teaching approaches – you know – I am much more of a constructivist, and if you are familiar with education and with teaching then some of that might make sense. The work of - going back to the work of pioneers - like Dewey, Piaget, and so on.
Question: Do you define yourself as a Chicano artist? How do you define yourself as an artist? How do you define the type of art that you create?
Answer: Well let me go back to your original question, how do I define myself as an artist and why or how? The term Chicano and this is a, this is the quandary that I’ve had since the show, Phantom Sightings. Are you familiar with the show Phantom Sightings? Yes. Okay, these are the problems that I had with the discourse that developed around that show is that prior to that show the Chicano scholars, etc., and through the basis of their show CARA in the early 90’s, Chicano was a term of self-designation and affirmation. Even if you look at Ruben Salazar’s definition of a Chicano is and I am paraphrasing her because I don’t have it at hand is that a Chicano is a term of self-designation for a Mexican-American with a non-Anglo view of himself. However, when you also look at the history of a Chicano it’s a very, very specific term that conjures up a very specific time in history of civil rights, etc., even though I was born in 1966 I was much too young to be part of that movement. So, as a result it would be very disingenuous of me – if I am speaking of a strict definition – based on the conferences and discourses I did with the CARA exhibition. That would not be an appropriate term to call myself or my art because it was not born out of that. It was not born out of that activism, etc. Now, the other aspect of it is that I, in fact, my cultural upbringing – now you can’t, it’s impossible for a person to separate their upbringing, etc., from their adult life. That is cultural molding, it’s impossible, however, I never viewed my art from an ethnic point of view. I allow others to do that. In fact, my art is very, very open ended. So, that’s one of the reasons that I don’t refer to myself as Chicano or to my work as Chicano because it does not merely identify and it doesn’t only come from an ethnic cultural place in that regard. Now after Phantom Sightings apparently the discourses around Phantom Sightings problematize that or at least that that’s – from my understanding – what the intentions were. They were to problematize the very notions of what Chicano was vitae the CARA exhibition, the CARA work. So, post Phantom Sightings, apparently it is okay even if you’re not Mexican American to sort of be part of that movement because if you have studied the Phantom Sightings and catalog you’ll find that some of the artists are not, do not have even a Mexican background necessarily. If that’s how others want to refer to it and if others identify with it and are able to view it through that lens that’s quite fine. Now I’m not saying that my cultural upbringing doesn’t play a part in my art because I think that’s kind of where we started this conversation to begin with., but if we are using the strict definition, Isabel, of the word Chicano then certainty my art is not that or at least I don’t think it is from my point of view it’s not. If others see it that way, if brothers read it that way then I don’t necessarily disagree or will have to fight with them. The condition of being the product of the twentieth – the later part of the twentieth century – and certainly the beginning of the twentieth century which is hybrid, the hybrid condition. I don’t say that in the sense that I don’t embrace my Mexican-ness because plenty enough, even though I was born in the United States, I can’t remember ever not saying that I am Mexican. It is just a natural reflex to say I am Mexican and then I am asked what part of Mexico were you born in. Well, I am really born here. I was actually born here in the United States, but I have always taken great pride. I am very proud of my Mexican heritage. It is not that I am trying to shoo or deny my Mexican-ness because that is the furthest thing from the truth, but again its going back to how I interpret this definition, also, of Chicano and it is also through the scholarly work that the other Chicano artists and scholars mined in the early 90’s relative to the CARA discourses. Once again my art does not necessarily focus on any one thing because I am not quick to have to interpret my art; I leave it up to others. I think that’s what makes art more accessible because that is, as an educator and certainly as an artist, because the practices work in tangents as far as I am concern – is that it democratizes the art a lot more. I think that by including the viewer into the discourse you legitimize and make a voice of the viewer by doing that. To me that’s a deliberate action on my part to include the viewer so that the viewer is part of the discourse and it is much more part easier that way. I don’t need to tell you how elitist art has been through the ages, there is the whole question of privilege. I can illustrate that point by saying the salient differences that people try to come up with when they talk about high art and folk art. This is the perfect example of an elitist attitude. If in fact we were talking and you asked me this question of how I describe my work. Semiology or science systems are of great interests to me and so I wish you would have been able to see my last exhibition because it really focused on this notion of the force of sight. We live in the force of sight and it was, a great deal of it was related to this notion of semiotics.
Photographs courtesy of Xavier Cázares Cortéz
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