Artist: Melanie Cervantes

Title: Not1More Deportation

Bio: Melanie Cervantes is a Xicana activist-artist whose role is to translate the hopes and dreams of justice movements into images that agitate and inspire.

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. Melanie’s training as an artist began with her mother and father.  She learned color theory while helping her mother select fabric for school clothes at Los Angeles swap meets; and she developed some of her technical skills by watching her dad repurpose neighborhood junk into her childhood treasures.

Melanie built on this knowledge by studying library books, designing and constructing her own clothes, and forging friendships with other creative people. At UC Berkeley she received formal training in Ethnic Studies, and in 2004 graduated with a Bachelors Degree. Melanie fuses what she learned from this interdisciplinary study of racialized peoples, her art skills and her strong decolonizing politics in order to become a powerhouse “artist of the people”.

Website: Dignidad Rebelde.

Categories: Posters