Ofrenda

Book excerpt: Liliana Wilson’s art of resistance and protest, dissidence and dreams, consistently calls attention to injustice. Wilson belongs to a group of Chilean artists who were intimately shaped by the political turmoil and repression in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s and who have become self-exiled artists working outside of Chile but who are still tied to the political period and to its issues and concerns. From a working class family that struggled financially, Wilson nonetheless was able to study law, which facilitated her successful immigration to the United States in 1977. She moved to Texas and in Austin found a cultural oasis that permitted her art to blossom. Now, after some thirty years of artistic work in Texas, she is recognized as a major Latina artist, whose influence extends beyond US borders. A crusader for justice and against oppression, she paints and draws in various media and has become an inspiration for younger artists concerned with not only political repression and inequality but also individual fear and despair. Ofrenda: Liliana Wilson’s Art of Dissidence and Dreams highlights some of Wilson’s most representative works, accompanied by biographical background and scholarly interpretation.