Adriana Abundis
Xicana | Scholar | Pedagouge | Artist
EDUCATE & CREATE
Even as a Mexican-American born and raised in Los Angeles, California the historic knowledge and culture of my Mexican ancestry was often neglected, paraphrased, or distorted in my upbringing. I grew up believing that I was better than my fellow Mexicanos because of my assimilation to standard English and the conventional American lifestyle. I remember understanding no divisions of class and race, though in retrospect, they were most definitely there. However, as I entered college in 2007, I soon realized my educational pipeline would take a turn toward self and cultural empowerment, spiritual awakenings and reclamations of my people’s history-our story.
After participating in the Xicanx community, which I felt most connected to, I enrolled in Xicanx Studies courses and soon was able to realize a story that I had never heard before. At that moment, a story of truth, power, and community empowered my spirit to resist further colonization and exploitation of my people, my culture and of my mind.
This same spirit empowers me to produce various forms of art to explain, understand, and respond to how I view my culture and the past that we have endured that went hidden in my life. My arte is my resistance! My truth! My passion!
Amongst a time of banning of ethnic and raza studies, I urge scholars and citizens to resist such oppression, for I and my talents are of pure result to a reclamation of my history through education.
With my art, I hope to communicate messages of the realities of both Xicanx and the exploitative patterns of our institutions that possess unjust consequences to this day. I seek to reconquer the histories of my people and distribute them through a critical lens. Mi arte marries my passions of design, illustration, and Xicanx history.
Today, I am living in San Antonio as a middle school teacher. My current artistic ventures include muralism y la xicanada!