Laura Aguilar

b. 1959, San Gabriel, California
d. 2018, Los Angeles

Venue

Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans
900 Camp Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Monday, 11 AM–5 PM
Tuesday, closed
Wednesday–Sunday, 11–5 PM

Neighborhood

Downtown/Central Business District (CBD)

About the project

The selection of works on view by Laura Aguilar features some of her best-known images, self-portraits that use landscape to explore her relationship to Mexican and American history and culture, her sexual identity, and the hybrid spaces in between.

In the series Nature Self-Portraits, Aguilar is pictured in compositions in which her body mirrors geological formations, portraying herself as part of nature, vulnerable to its rigid terrains and their histories. Exposed in this way, Aguilar negotiated among her identities, using her body to converse with and overwrite topography. Her self-portraits challenge the conception of the historical document through an emphasis on her body as an archive and suggest the interconnectedness of ourselves and the larger world we inhabit. For her Stillness series, Aguilar placed herself in a reverent relationship to nature; though still a part of nature, she embodied a humble yet autonomous presence in the larger natural world. In these images, Aguilar’s body references but ultimately eschews the aesthetics and values of the long history of the female nude in art. In using her body as her main subject and revealing it in the contours of different contexts, Aguilar brought forward her identity in her works amid the difficult narratives of settler colonialism and silenced histories.

About the artist

Laura Aguilar spent most of her prolific career examining her identity as a Chicana lesbian artist. After studying photography at East Los Angeles College, her production in her early career was characterized by portraits of diverse communities in the Los Angeles area and self-portraits, which are representations of herself as a complex individual: Chicana, lesbian, and struggling with learning disabilities and depression. Later she would incorporate nude self-portraits and nude portraits of other women into her work, challenging contemporary depictions of beauty and highlighting the intimacy between the female form and nature. Her photographs first expose the visibility of these underrepresented and marginalized women, then celebrate them. Aguilar died at age 58, when recognition of her work was gaining momentum. Since her passing, she has joined the ranks of other iconic female photographers. Among her many notable exhibitions are her participation in the 45th Venice Biennale (1993), The Huntington Library Art Collections (2008), The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, (2010) and her solo exhibition, Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell at The Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2017–18).

Laura Aguilar, 2021. Installation view: Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021–22. Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photos 1 and 2: Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee; Photos 3 and 4: Alex Marks