Artist-in-Residence
Jacqueline Valenzuela
February -May 2024
Jacqueline Valenzuela:
On this I Stand
May 4-June 1
On This I Stand: an interdisciplinary exploration of the lowrider community and automotive industry from a woman’s perspective.
On This I Stand is Jacqueline Valenzuela’s latest body of work that highlights her three-year fine-art hiatus to focus on painting lowriders in an auto shop instead of producing personal work. Valenzuela gained insight into painting approaches used by auto paint technicians as well as knowledge of various materials commonly used by car builders and car owners. This experience redefined what art meant to her. Since then, Valenzuela’s work has increasingly involved mixed media and non-traditional approaches.
These pieces in particular unpack the aesthetics of lowriding. Resulting in a visual experience that is reflective of the imagery that Valenzuela comes across in her daily life as a woman that is fully engulfed in lowrider culture.
The larger scale work in On This I Stand is reflective of these moments Valenzuela comes across during her everyday routine at her studio. While the smaller scale works that function as deconstructed lowriders zoom in on details of lowriders and the hands of the women in this community. Ultimately, On This I Stand is a reflection of Valenzuela’s first-hand experiences or stories of the women within the lowrider community.
Artist Statement:
Jackie’s work centers on her experiences as a woman within the Chicano lowriding world. Growing up right by “the Boulevard”, she was exposed to the kinetic art of lowriders, classics, and hot rods. Her ties to this car world intensified when her fiancé gifted her "La Playgirl" –a hot pink 1975 Cadillac Eldorado. She took a three-year fine-art hiatus to focus on painting lowriders in an auto shop instead of producing personal work. Her insight into painting approaches used by auto paint technicians redefined what her art meant. Her work has evolved to include mixed media and non-traditional approaches. Using bold colors, oils, portraiture, lowrider kustom paint, and elements of the urban landscape, she creates compositions that emphasize femininity in this male-dominated world. Her approach is either in a delicate manner referencing the mural work found on lowrider kustom paint jobs or in a rough impasto manner referencing the countless defaced murals riddled with graffiti that are commonplace in the communities these cars traverse .Her surfaces range from larger-scale painting on canvas, an assemblage style frame or found object installation including rasquachismo (using whatever materials are available to you to create, even junk). She finds inspiration in images of her first-hand experiences or stories of the women within the lowrider community.
She views her process as a sacred space, similar to ritual. She believes building or cruising a lowrider has spiritualistic underpinnings and is an act of worship, which impacts her thought process knowing that every choice she makes is intentional and rooted in the authenticity it takes to be a woman in the lowrider world.
“As an artist with a studio space in an automotive shop, I look forward to having a studio space where I can rest, reconnect and evolve my work in a way I would like to. Having the chance to create in a space without machinery and constant noise feels as though it’ll positively influence my art practice. Even just having the opportunity to share my body of work with arts professionals in a calm environment is something I believe would benefit myself and my career.”
-Jacqueline Valenzuela, Spring 2024 AiR
