Harry Gamboa Jr.


Harry Gamboa Jr. is a Chicano essayist, photographer, director and performance artist. He was a founding member of the influential Chicano performance art collective ASCO.

Biography

The first of five children born to a working-class Mexican American couple, Gamboa grew up in East Los Angeles, California, "an urban area tormented by poverty, violence, and racial conflict". Despite the "inadequacy of the East L.A. public schools", Gamboa was encouraged to value education and did fairly well in school, and he was active in community organizations and politics as a teenager. As a high-school student, Gamboa was active in student government and an organizer of various student-initiated reforms, most significantly the 1968 "East L.A. Blowouts"—a series of protests against the inferior conditions of public schools in poor, non-white areas.
Gamboa's extracurricular activities were not, however, limited to politics. Already a developing artist, it was at Garfield High that Gamboa met Gronk, Patssi Valdez, and Willie Herrón, three of his closest associates in his later career. After the "Blowouts" of his senior year, Gamboa dropped out of the political scene to dedicate himself to his education. Thanks to these efforts and with the help of the Equal Opportunities Program for disadvantaged minority students, Gamboa was able to attend California State University, Los Angeles.
From this point, his career as an artist—both solo and with Gronk, Valdez, and Herrón in the art collective ASCO —"took off". Among other "urban interventions," Asco sprayed their names on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
In 1993 Gamboa married his second wife, Chicana muralist Barbara Carrasco, after seven years of romantic and professional involvement.
The Getty Research Institute Pacific Standard Time initiative that focused on postwar art in Los Angeles featured the major exhibition, Asco: Elite of the Obscure, a retrospective, 1972-1987, at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 4 - December 4, 2011.
Elite of the Obscure, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA, February 4 - July 29, 2012.
Patrick Charpenel selected Asco: Elite of the Obscure as Mexico City’s Best, 2013, ,
Gamboa's photograph, Decoy Gang War Victim, 1974, was featured on the cover of .
Michael Ned Holte selected, Asco: Elite of the Obscure, as his #1 pick for Best of 2011 in .
Christopher Knight selected, Asco: Elite of the Obscure, 2011 year in review: Best in Art, 2011 .
His work has been exhibited by museums nationally/internationally:
Museum Ludwig, Cologne ; Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.; Tirafkan Cultural Foundation, Tehran ; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions ; Davis Museum at Wellesley College ; Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art UNLV, Las Vegas ; Vincent Price Art Museum ELAC, Monterey Park ; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gill, Mexico City ; Autry Museum of the American West ; Foto Forum Santa Fe ; Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago, Chile ; Marlborough Contemporary, New York ; MOCA Pacific Design Center ; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York ; Delaware Art Museum ; Utah Museum of Fine Arts ; Princeton University Art Museum ; , Bordeaux, France ; , Amsterdam, Netherlands ; , Linz, Austria ; , Nottingham, England ; , Washington D.C. ; , Marseille, France ; , Mexico City ; Tate Liverpool, Liverpook, England ; Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City ; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles ; Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland ; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA ; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England ; , Guadalajara, Mexico ; Los Angeles County Museum of Art ; Fowler Museum, UC Los Angeles ; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City ; Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles ; El Museo del Barrio, New York ; The Huntington Library, San Marino, California ; , Mexico City ; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France ; , Mexico City ; International Center of Photography, New York ; MIT List Visual Arts Center ; Queens Museum of Art ; Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. ; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark ; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY ; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles ; LAX/CSU Los Angeles ; Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City ; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago ; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City ; , Tucson, AZ.
He has received numerous awards from institutions including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Artist Award, the Visual Artist Award, the , the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, the California Arts Council, , and National Endowment for the Arts.
Hilda Solis, Los Angeles County Supervisor, First District presented Harry Gamboa Jr. with a County of Los Angeles Commendation, August 1, 2017:
"In recognition of dedicated service to the affairs of the community and for the civic pride demonstrated by numerous contributions for the benefit of all citizens of Los Angeles County."
2010 Latino Heritage Month was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by a wide spectrum of supporters in Council Chambers at the famed Los Angeles City Hall, where Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa presented the Latino Heritage Awards: Spirit of Los Angeles Willie Herrón III, Patssi Valdez, and Harry Gamboa Jr. accepted the award on behalf of Asco), Dream of Los Angeles Tony Plana, Hope of Los Angeles Plácido Domingo.
Gamboa founded/directed Virtual Vérité, an international ensemble performance troupe.
Sidewalk Quinceañera
Calibre Libre
Thin Line
Borderless
He is Co-Director, Program in Photography and Media, California Institute of the Arts.
He has taught at various universities and art institutions, including California State University, Northridge, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Riverside, University of California, Irvine, University of California, Santa Barbara, University of California, San Diego, Otis/Parsons, and Maine College of Art.
He has delivered artist talks at: Temple University, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Harvard University; UC Berkeley; University of Houston; Stanford University; Dartmouth College; Cornell University; Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University; School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; ; University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda", Mexico City.
In Plain Sight, conceived by Cassils and rafa esparza, is a coalition of 80 artists fighting migrant detention and the culture of incarceration. The performance occurred July 3, 2020 appeared in the sky above Mesa Verde ICE Processing Facility & Detention Center, Bakersfield, California.
NO ICE NO ICE NO ICE
He served as a juror for Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Outwin Boochever Competition 2019
In Spring 2018, From ‘No Movie’ to ‘Fake Buzzers’ and The Sixth Expanse, Harry Gamboa Jr. in conversation with Hugo Hopping , SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark.
In Fall 2017, he delivered keynote, , Middelheim Museum, Antwerpen, organized by Nico Dockx and Pascal Gielen.
In Fall 2012, Universitair Centrum Sint Ignatius Antwerpen - UCSIA sponsored Gamboa to present, , an artist talk at Universiteit Antwerpen. He also worked with students and faculty of Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen along with Belgian artists Ria Pacquée and Nico Dockx to produce in Antwerpen and Brugge.
His photographs are in the permanent collection of Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
His photographs are in the permanent collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
His photographs are in the permanent collection of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
His photographs are in the permanent collection of Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, CA
His photographs are in the permanent collection of , Williamstown, MA.
His photographs are in the permanent collection of , Williamstown, MA.
His photographs are in the permanent collection of , New York, NY.
His lithographs are in the permanent collection of Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, University of California, Los Angeles.
His oral history is included in . His oral history is also included in .
A permanent collection of his media works/papers has been established and archived at Green Library, Stanford University.

Works

e-Books

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