The ICI traveling exhibition Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. explored the intersections among a network of over fifty Los Angeles-based queer Chicanx artists, who primarily worked between the late 1960s and early 1990s, and was the first of its kind to excavate these histories of experimental art practice, collaboration, and exchange. As referenced in its title, the exhibition also shed light onto the work of Edmundo “Mundo” Meza (1955-1985), a central figure within his generation.
This video features interviews with some of the many members of the community that made Axis Mundo possible: artists Louis Jacinto, Joey Terrill, Judy Miranda, Roberto Gil de Montes, Jef Huereque, and Pat Meza (sister of artist Mundo Meza); exhibition co-curator David Evans Frantz; and ICI staff members Renaud Proch and Becky Nahom. They offer insights into the ways the exhibition enlivened the collaborative networks that connected these artists to one another and to artists from many different communities, cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, and international urban centers, thus deepening and expanding narratives about the development of the Chicano Art Movement, performance art, and queer aesthetics and practices.
