Rafa Esparza: Brown the Experiment
“I find myself time traveling when I am making art,” Rafa Esparza said. “My relationship to adobe comes from my relationship to my family. Learning how to make adobe was something that I asked my father because I missed our friendship and his guidance, and he taught me.”
Esparza is a first-generation Mexican American and multidisciplinary performance artist who resides in Los Angeles. Many SMC students are able to relate to his experiences of being the first in the family to navigate the college experience.
“Hearing Esparza's journey reminds SMC students that community college is the first step toward growth and a place to explore interests and creativity. Esparza's work engages contemporary topics that are of interest to SMC students, including Brown queer identity, challenges to the rigidity of traditional spaces like museums, responses to policing and surveillance, the impact ICE has had on the Latiné community in Los Angeles, and connecting heritage and personal identity to greater community engagement,” Brianna Simmons said.
Simmons is an art history professor at SMC and attended the talk with her students. “It is so important for SMC students to know that their education, their engagement, their presence truly matters,” Simmons said.
Simmons said Esparza highlighted his transformative experience at community college during his speech and how meaningful it was for him. “Now he is a renowned artist with exhibitions at museums like the Whitney in New York City and also abroad, such as Diego Rivera's Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City,” Simmons said.
“In his talk, Esparza talked about the significance adobe holds for him and showcased his recent artwork connecting Mexican culture to the community today,” Mara Laforte, SMC student and sociology major, said. “I would love to see more artists talk like this on campus. It’s inspiring to hear stories behind the work and feel a connection to the artist instead of watching or reading about them on a screen.”
Laforte sat in the first row prepared to take notes during the talk. She was drawn to the event after taking an art history class at SMC.
“The thing that interested me most about this event was Esparza’s creative scale in using adobe as his base. His range from adobe paintings to adobe floors amazed me,” Laforte said.
SMC Art Professor Robert Huerta took the opportunity to invite Esparza to speak on campus.
“The Santa Monica Associates Lecture Series takes place every year, and I saw it as an opportunity to invite Rafa, whose work aligns with the themes of the ‘Concrete Hope’ exhibition currently on display at Santa Monica College's Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery,” Huerta said.
Huerta saw Esparza’s story as an inspiration for students, saying “Rafa's trajectory from a community college to a UC serves as a model for students in the Art Department looking to continue their arts education and develop a professional practice as an artist.”
“I hope that students who attended the event were inspired by the scale that Rafa has taken his work over the span of his career and moved to continue the development of their own ideas in whatever they do,” Huerta said.
Esparza said he wanted to learn how to work with adobe as a way to connect with his father and also challenge the classification of adobe as being only used as a building material to now seeing it as an artistic medium.
Bringing adobe into the museum space was a way for Esparza to challenge who and what type of art can be in those spaces.
“I think it is important for students to experience contemporary artists like Esparza because he is at the forefront of changing paradigms,” Simmons said.