Speaker:

Diane Gamboa

DIANE GAMBOA
FROM THE QUEEN OF ANGELS and THROUGH THE CITY OF THE SINFUL
Wednesday, October 16, 4pm Campbell Hall

This lecture and visual presentation focuses on how music plays into visual outcome and how it is helpful in the release of present day tension in the urban atmosphere. Gamboa is currently organizing her personal art, photographs, and music archives with the intent of highlighting much that has not been touched by the mainstream ten foot pole. The tactical archival material and memory digging is energizing something new and exciting. A picture can tell a thousand words, but which words captivate a visual image?

Co-presented by UCSB Arts and Lectures and the Department of Black Studies. Co-sponsored by the Center for Black Studies Research, the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives in the Department of Special Collections at the UCSB Library, Department of Feminist Studies, and Department of History of Art and Architecture.

< https://artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu/Details.aspx?PerfNum=2832>

Diane Gamboa is a fine artist whose work has been exhibited extensively for decades. The major mediums in which she works are painting, ink drawing, photography, printmaking and paper fashion sculpture. Diane has also worked on numerous installations and as a visual stylist in collaboration with others. In the early 1980s she used black and white photography to document the Bad Influence series featuring punk bands from East L.A. and other bands of the time. Between 1980 and 1987, Gamboa was member, consultant, stylist, and referee in the ASCO collective, a multi-media performance art group. Over the years she has created numerous site-specific Hit and Run paper fashion live presentations. The concept was to juxtapose highly distinctive disposable paper sculpture on non-traditional models. The urban landscape served as the perfect environment for the Hit and Run presentations which would run generally from 5 to 30 minutes but would sometimes go on for hours as an instant street party. In 1997, Gamboa started the Pin Up series made up of 366 ink drawings of males on vellum. The series is an in-depth study of interpersonal relationships between women and men. The Pin Up and Pin Down images take place in interior settings with a strong personal touch of pattern and design. The Pin Up works led to the Endangered Species series that recreates the Pin Up drawing in three-dimensional form. These works entail ink tattoos on flesh but also works on glass, metal, and concrete. The cultural diversity in the city of Los Angeles continues to inspire and incite her artistic curiosity.

Gamboa's depictions of both actual places and fictive spaces have draw increasing scholarly and critical attention, most recently in Karen Mary Davalos's chapter on Gamboa and her art in the 2012 book Performing the US Latina And Latino Borderlands. Gamboa was named Distinguished Alumna of Otis College of Art and Design her work was selected for the Coagula Curatorial in 2013. In addition to the Regent's Lecture on October 16, Gamboa will be visiting classes, meeting with students and faculty members, and participating in panel discussions.