Los Angeles – When Travis Gutiérrez Senger filmmaker reflects on the legacy of disgust, he quickly points out that they were more than an art group; Created a movement, one with a remarkable influence on Chicano art history.
“That movement continues today, and is very expansive,” he says. “There are many books, movies and things that will be written about disgust for a period of time. And this was our contribution in some way.”
He’s Referring To “Asco: Without Permision,” A Documentary That Chronicles The Story of the 1970s Art Group Founded by Multidisciplinary Artist Patssi Valdez, Muralist Willie Herrón III, Paninter and Performance Artist Gronk and Writer and Photographer Harry Gamboa Jr. Teens, Formed as Young Adults, and Calleed Their Group “Asco” – “Nausea” or “Disgust” in Spanish – After one of his first DIY exhibitions. Their conceptual work and art of performance spoke with the exclusion of Chicanos from the world of main art and systemic police brutality suffered by the American Mexican community in eastern Los Angeles.
The four founding members of disgust became some of the most notable Chicanian artists, later exhibiting works in venerated museums in the United States. But in its early days, the group was denied access to notable galleries and museums. They created their own ways in the form of public actions, murals and more to exhibit their work, their path.
“Being badly is the ethical thing you can do,” said executive producer Gael García Bernal in the film South By SouthWest Film Festival Premiere earlier this month. “You are building identity and questioning and unmasking the facade and the farce that exists.”
Bernal and Diego Luna Executive produced the film under its producer The Gulf’s current. The film has not yet found the distribution.
Talking to Associated Press, Gamboa and Valdez praised the Gutiérrez Senger approach to their history. Both members, who appear in the documentary, saw the film for the first time with a multitude of fans and a group of young Chicanos artists whose art was inspired by the early disgust rebellion.
“I felt that the movie really captured the essence of all of us working together,” Gamboa said.
Valdez says it was a special moment for her, as the only woman in the founding group, to have the same time and understanding.
“For the first time, they gave me an equal voice in the group that had not happened before,” he said, citing how the group’s previous stories only highlighted their male collaborators.
Disgust arose in the apogee of the Chicanian civil rights movement in the sixties and seventies. It was a moment of greater political and racial tension in the middle of the East la Footprints, Protest of educational inequality, and the Chicana moratorium, an anti-Vietnam war movement during which many Mexico were victims of police brutality.
The muralists and groups appeared when Latin artists sought to process systemic injustice that took place in their communities.
“The response to such violence was to create art,” said Gamboa Jr. that he wanted to alter the dominant perception of Chicans and present the possibilities and ways that someone can create despite social limitations.
For Valdez, being the only woman meant that she was not oblivious to a double dose of racism in society and sexism woven in conservative Latin homes, where young women were expected to remain silent.
“I could not bear it. So, I could represent these forms of censorship through the work of performance in disgust,” said Valdez, who once recorded on a public wall in a piece entitled “Instant mural”, a metaphor of feeling captive.
One of the best known work is “Aerosol painting Lacma”. Gamboa, Gronk and Herrón Spray painted their names next to the Los Angeles County Art Museum after Gamboa says that a curator told him: “The Chicanos are in gangs, they do not make art.”
“There was another era in which people said: ‘Latin art, you know, it does not exist. It is not a thing. It does not belong. It is not part of the American art,” said Pilar Tompkins-Rivas, the chief curator and deputy director of the Lucas narrative art museum.
The performance art of the neighborhood of Asco often drew looks and even crowds. In “Station of the Cross”, the group brought a large cross to the local military recruitment office to protest the Vietnam War.
In 1974, Gamboa took a photo of Gronk presented as the victim of gang violence to attract attention to the sensational coverage of the media in eastern Los Angeles. In the documentary, Gamboa affirms that a local news station executed the piece as a real story.
The work of disgust as a group remained in the dark of the mainstream. It was not until 2011 when Lacma set up “disgust: Elite of the Obscure, a retrospective, 1972-1887”, the first retrospective to present the performance and conceptual art of the group. On the exhibition there was an image of Valdez, taken by Gamboa, which is on the art of graffiti. Life had disgusted his full circle moment.
“Latin history has always been erased,” said Gutiérrez Senger. “‘Disgust: without permission’ is a story of winning a battle, not a war.”
A 1974 photograph of Valdez shows the glamorous artist in a golden top, holding a golden statue of a cobra. She had won the best actress at the Aztlan awards no Movie Awards: a disgust fictional awards program created as a comment on the Lack of Latin representation in Hollywood.
The group was inspired by the Hollywood cinema and popular culture, but knew that the probability of starring in study films was limited, unless they wanted to play a maid, leader of the poster or member of the gang.
“Hollywood movies, rock ‘n’ roll. That’s what it was about,” said Valdez. “And that’s why I responded in the way I did it with my art manufacture.”
Gamboa photographed Herrón, Gronk and Valdez using film stock to capture the essence of his favorite films. The series was called “No movies” and then inspired its satirical awards program.
Gutiérrez Senger was attracted to him and pays tribute throughout the documentary by presenting a group of young Chicanos artists, including Los Angeles local artists such as Fabi Reyna and San Cha, in short films inspired by the style of disgusting DIY.
“I think it is a necessary obligation as Latin if you are making films to fight very, very difficult to put the brown people on the screen and behind the camera and try to create movies about our history,” said Gutiérrez Senger. “We have rich stories, and we have a rich story.”
“Disgust: without permission” includes testimonies of respected Latin artists, including Michael Peña actor and Comedian Arturo Castro, Those who have entered the mainstream but know the importance of preserving history.
“Our history as Latinos is not in history books. The movements we have had are not in history books,” says Peña in the documentary.
Although it often seems that the progression is slow, Valdez says that artists need to continue expressing their opinions and “behave badly and not ask permission.”
“You don’t need permission to be yourself. You don’t need permission to be creative. You don’t need permission to be intellectual,” said Gamboa. “And the thing is that you cannot allow yourself to be repressed or silenced or visually reduced from the works.”
