Barbara Carrasco, Artist

Pregnant Woman in a Ball of Yarn , 1978

The Los Angeles–based muralist and painter Barbara Carrasco explores what it means to be Chicana in works informed by her feminist perspective and her experiences of personal and sociopolitical struggle. Carrasco designed Pregnant Woman in a Ball of Yarn on a single night in 1978 after finding out that her sister-in-law had been prohibited from going to college by her husband (the artist's brother) because she was pregnant. Carrasco and her brother had been brought up by a strong liberal mother, and for the artist it was unconceivable that a woman would be confined to a single role in the home. This small but powerful work was almost censored in the seminal exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation in 1990 as some curators deemed it offensive and sexist. In its depiction of the subjugation of women in a male-dominated society, it in fact precisely critiques sexism.

La experiencia de luchas personales  y sociopolíticas, aunada a la perspectiva feminista de la muralista y pintora basada en Los Ángeles, Barbara Carrasco, informa su exploración de lo que significa ser Chicana. Carrasco diseñó Pregnant Woman in a Ball of Yarn (Mujer embarazada en ovillo de lana) en una sola noche en 1978, luego de descubrir que su hermano le había prohibido a su esposa (la cuñada de la artista) estudiar en la universidad porque estaba embarazada. Carrasco y su hermano fueron criados por una madre fuerte y liberal y para la artista era inconcebible que una mujer sea restringida a desempeñar un sólo papel en la casa. Esta pequeña pero potente obra casi fue censurada en la exhibición seminal Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation en 1990 porque algunos curadores la consideraban ofensiva y sexista.  En su representación de la subyugación de la mujer en una sociedad dominada por el hombre, es precisamente el sexismo lo que critica la obra.