# Angelica Muro

Angelica Muro (1977) is an multimedia visual artist, curator, and art educator.

## Biography

Muro was born and raised in the Central Valley agricultural community of Hopeton, California. She holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Mills College and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Photography from San Jose State University. Currently, Muro is the Chair of the Department of Visual and Public Art and Assistant Professor of Integrated Media and Photography in the Department of Visual and Public Art at California State University, Monterey Bay.

## Art

Muro situates her artwork within a complex dialogue about contemporary political, social, and cultural issues. Muro herself focus on the complexities of the ecosystem–the spectrum of productivity, exploitation, and the distribution of wealth–and relates to issues of gender, race, and class.
* Famous work includes Club Lido: Wild Eyes, Occasional Dreams, Packing Heat.
* Famous projects include Public Space, Space 47 Projects, and Chafismo: New Artforms of Art Post-Raquachismo.
* Angelica Muro served as Gallery Coordinator for WORKS/San José for five years
* Educational Programmer for Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA, San José, California) for three years
* Principal and co-founder of Public Space/Chinatown and the director of the Visual and Public Art Gallery @CSUMB.
Packing Heat is a multi-media installation inspired by female representations in Mexican Cinema, consisting of photographs, drawings, and sculptural elements that reference the female action heroine as femme fatale - openly playing into the "new math" of post-feminism (hotness=self-empowerment). These images evoke cinematic expressions and allegories that imply a culture of fear while paradoxically. indulging romantic notions of gender empowerment, violence, and equalization.
A Guide for Agricultural Workers Series using drawings and photographs, Angelica Muro examines agribusiness exploitation of farm workers through unsafe pesticide handling policies and practices. As a tool of discourse, this work utilizes a pamphlet provided by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to farm workers to advise them on pesticides. Written in Spanish, the pamphlet uses cartoon characters that appeal to common stereotypes and overly simplistic language to patronize farm workers who ironically have a deep understanding of the tragic effects of pesticide debris on their communities. Her reproductions of these drawings place the illustrations in a different context, forcing the viewer to contemplate the pamphlet designer's demeaning and unbridled choice of images and text.
Untitied (Club Lido) collaborators Angelica Muro and Juan Luna-Avin depict the downtown San Jose subcultures at Lido Night Club. While San Jose has large Vietnamese and Mexican populations, these two groups rarely interact. At Lido Night Club, however, Vietnamese performers entertain weekend crowds upstairs, while club-goers dance to Mexican banda music downstairs. The club has also become the epicenter of a growing Latin transgender community in San Jose. In their drawings and installation, Muro & Lu-na-Avin explore and celebrate the unexpected subcultures present in San Jose.