Neo-Chicano: Recuerdos de Mi Familia

Part One of the LA Futurism Summer Series 

Neo-Chicano: Recuerdos de Mi Familia marks the first installment of LA Futurism, a three-part summer curatorial project exploring the evolution of  Los Angeles & Chicano/a/e art in the 21st century through the lens of futurism and contemporary painting.

In Neo-Chicano: Recuerdos de Mi Familia, building on the legacy of Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement (LACMA & UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2008), this exhibition departs from overtly political mural traditions to embrace a more personal and painterly expression. It situates painting as a medium that bridges conceptual lineage and cultural reinvention—foregrounding artists who engage identity, memory, and future-making through a distinctly Los Angeles perspective.

Rooted in the dual influences of the Chicano/a/e movement and early 20th-century Italian Futurism, Neo-Chicane responds to today’s socio-political climate by reclaiming and transforming the futurist impulse. Rather than rejecting the past, this exhibition embraces ancestral memory—rituals, family, and cultural heritage—as a generative force. The visual language of the show draws on the vibrant, electrified hues of the 1960s–1980s. Colors associated with rebellion, freedom, and anti-establishment movements—to reframe the traditional Chicano/a/e palette in contemporary terms.

While Italian Futurism sought rupture and mechanized modernity, Neo-Chicano reclaims futurism as a space for inclusion, hybridity, and the reimagining of belonging. It confronts dominant American mythologies by asking: how can a movement rooted in community, resistance, and survival project itself into the future?