Judithe Hernández: Beyond Myself, Somewhere, I Wait for My Arrival

Chicana painter Judithe Hernández’s subversive female archetypes offer her perspective on the historical and contemporary roles of women

Published with Riverside Art Museum and The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture.

As the fifth and only female member of the art collective Los Four, Judithe Hernández (born 1948) was a figurehead of Chicano/a art in California. She began her artistic career as a muralist in the 1970s, executing commissions for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union, and at the Ramona Gardens Housing Project in East Los Angeles. Her paintings and pastel drawings place women against vague, dreamlike backgrounds, clothed in traditional garb or surrounded by animals, gesturing beyond the picture plane while gazing solidly at the viewer. Art historian Margarita Nieto writes that Hernández "speaks of woman hidden in her masks of roles…enhanced by a subconscious precognition of a mythic past." Beyond Myself, Somewhere, I Wait for My Arrival represents the first comprehensive evaluation of Hernández’s 50-year career, and how it has informed Chicano/a artistic practices today.