The Space Between: The Lynching Project

This chapter addresses the theories, methods, and aesthetic and political strategies of my interrelated projects on lynching. In thinking about the history of lynching across time and across different regions of the country, I seek to open a space for different artistic and academic research methods as well as to reflect on the racial imaginary and its relationship to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities, the history of racial formation, and the critical exploration of settler colonialism and its legacies. As a visual artist, I have learned that my work must exist in relationship to both language and art, must embrace technology and be able to communicate in ways that are harder to quantify. This is what I mean by the space between. My practice has always involved research in both text and image, but it is also about making and the materiality of the final work as visual art, which matters most.

Keywords: California ; Chicanos ; Chicanx ; justice ; Latinos ; Lynching ; Mexican-American ; vigilante