Bienvendios y welcome! This is the start of something new.
The Rasquache is an independent art criticism journal dedicated to centering and uplifting outsider perspectives from the margins of the art world and all its institutions: museums, galleries, academies, auction houses, and the broader art market.
We have chosen to use the term rasquache to signify the collision of what is traditionally described as “high” and “low” brow, as well as the broader appropriation of establishment aesthetics and knowledge presented from the perspectives of marginalized people across the art world. Our editorial body and featured authorship are intentionally structured to center and prioritize working-class writers and artists from all walks of life.
Despite our name’s origins within a distinctly Chicano context, we publish articles from all corners of the art world. We care deeply about art and artists that have been ignored, undervalued, or misread by hegemonic criticism.
As a journal for the art world’s marginalized voices, our stance will always be firmly anti-war, anti-genocide, anti-hate, anti-racism, and anti-discrimination. We seek representation and preservation for the voices of our communities as alt-right regimes across the world vie for total domination. We strongly condemn the actions of world leaders and all their loyal servants who seek to destroy us.
Rasquache is the English form of a Spanish word with Nahuatl origins that can more or less be defined as low-class or tacky, or perhaps of poor taste. Plainly, its roots are inherently classist, and it has been applied as a slur toward working-class Chicano communities with the implication that one possesses vulgar sensibilities or a vulgar way of life.
In 1989, Chicano scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto reclaimed the term rasquache (also: rascuache) by coining rasquachismo, the expression, or rather, archive, of Chicano attitude and taste. That which falls under the umbrella of rasquachismo within an artistic context prioritizes DIY aesthetics and a make-do attitude; much of the attitude or taste of rasquachismo is derived from the lived experiences of Chicano communities in the borderlands of the American Southwest and nationally.
Rasquachismo is notably not a style, nor an idea, as Ybarra-Frausto explains. In a sense, it is a way to track or achieve some visible semblance of community within the arts: it is the act of taking up space as Chicanos. Rasquachismo is therefore not a specific aesthetic expression, but can be understood as the rebellious manifestation of, or insistence upon, certain aesthetic qualities derived from working-class barrio sensibilities expressed through the overarching attitude that the term connotes.
”To be rasquache is to posit a bawdy, spunky consciousness seeking to subvert and turn ruling paradigms upside down - a witty, irreverant and impertinent posture that recodes and moves outside established boundaries… Rasquachismo is neither an idea nor a style but more of an attitude or a taste.”
— TOMÁS YBARRA-FRAUSTO, RASQUACHISMO: A CHICANO SENSIBILITY (1989)
We are so excited to watch this journal grow and blossom over time and we hope it will be an exciting new platform for likeminded thinkers to flourish and make their voice heard. ¡Disfruten!