DOI: 10.25549/selfhelp-ouc16954477
title: Miranda Rights, 2018

description: Serigraph of a person with white rectangular patch over eyes. Blue stripe running down one side with wording, “you have the right to remain silent.” Dominant colors: red, yellow, black, blue. Artist Statement (Malaquias Montoya): Malaquias Montoya was born in 1938 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley. He was brought up in a family of seven children by parents who could neither read nor write in spanish or english. The three oldest children never went beyond a seventh grade education as the entire family had to work as farm laborers for their survival. His father and mother were divorced when he was ten, and his mother continued to work in the fields to support the four children still remaining at home so they could pursue their education. Montoya graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 1969. Since then he has lectured and taught at numerous colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area including Stanford and the California College of the Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA for twelve years, serving for five years as chair of the Ethnic Studies Department. During this period, he also served as Director of the Taller de Artes Graficas, in East Oakland, where he produced prints and conducted community art workshops. Since 1999, Montoya has held a professorship at the University of California, Davis, teaching both in the Department of Art and the Department of Chicana/o Studies. In 2000, he spent a semester as Visiting Professor in the Art department at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, and he currently holds the title of Visiting Fellow in the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame. Along with Carlos Jackson, Montoya co-founded Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer in 2009, where he continues to teach community art classes. A professor emeritus since 2008, Montoya’s classes at Davis included the silkscreen workshop, community muralism, and survey courses focusing on CHicano culture and history. His own works include acrylic paintings, murals, washes, and drawings, but he is primarily known for his silkscreen prints, which have been exhibited around the world. He is credited by historians as one of the founders of the social serigraphy movement in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1960’s. Montoya’s unique visual expression is an art of protest, depicting the resistance and strength of humanity in the face of injustice and the necessity to unite behind that struggle. Information on the Content of this Print: A person has been shot in the head by a police officer. The police are not in the image-police brutality, Black Lives Matter. The Miranda Rights, “you have the right to remain silent,” an irony. Malaquias Montoya’s print Miranda Rights satirizes the first clause “You have the right to remain silent”. The abstract expressionist mark-making is layered to create a dynamic image rich in content and texture. Malaquias Montoya was born in 1938 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley. He was brought up in a family of seven children by parents who could neither read nor write in spanish or english. The three oldest children never went beyond a seventh grade education as the entire family had to work as farm laborers for their survival. His father and mother were divorced when he was ten, and his mother continued to work in the fields to support the four children still remaining at home so they could pursue their education. Montoya graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 1969.