Melanie Cervantes
Dignidad Rebelde
Silk screen print, 20” x 26”, 2008
Melanie Cervantes is a Xicana activist-artist whose role is to translate the hopes and dreams of justice movements into images that are life-affirming and that inspire people to take action.
Melanie’s work includes black and white illustrations, paintings, installations and paper stencils, but she is best know for her prolific production of political screen prints and posters. Employing vibrant colors and hand-drawn illustrations, her work moves those viewed as marginal to the center — featuring powerful youth, elders, women, and queer and indigenous peoples.
Her most revered mentor is her partner and fellow printmaker Jesus Barraza, with whom she formed Dignidad Rebelde, a collaborative graphic arts project that translates stories of struggle and resistance into artwork that can be put back into the hands of the communities who inspire it.
Melanie has exhibited at Galería de la Raza (San Francisco); Woman Made Gallery and National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago); Mexic-Arte and Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (Austin, TX); and Crewest (Los Angeles). Internationally her art has reached Mexico, Slovenia, Palestine, Venezuela, Switzerland and Guatemala. Her work is in public collections of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, the Latin American Collection of the Green Library at Stanford, and the Hispanic Research Center at the Arizona State University as well as various private collections throughout the U.S.