Artist Panel Discussion: El Espíritu de Fruitvale: Art, Activism and Chicanismo in Fruitvale | 2277 International Blvd, Oakland, CA, United States, California 94606 | August 17, 2024 (2024)

Irene Perez (born 1950) is an artist and cofounder of the Mujeres Muralistas. While her parents hailed from Texas and Zacatecas, Mexico, Pérez grew up in Oakland, California, an experience that shaped her future politics and creative work. The artistic training she received at the Academy of Arts in San Francisco and the San Francisco Art Institute later served her as she worked on a range of community murals in the Mission District. She executed her first mural in Balmy Alley around 1973. Pérez, in collaboration with other Chicana feminist artists, challenged machismo within the Chicano art movement, and became a pioneer in the community mural movement. Together with Patricia Rodriguez, Graciela Carrillo, and Consuelo Méndez, Pérez cofounded the Mujeres Muralistas, an all-women art collective that defied gendered expectations and norms codified in the Chicano mural movement.
Xochitl Nevel-Guerrero (born 1954) is a painter, muralist, and mask maker. Her first mentor in art while growing up in the 1960s and 1970s was her father, Raymundo Saltiel Nevel, the artist-activist known as Zala. Since painting her first mural in high school in 1972, Nosotros Venceremos, she has dedicated her life to creating and teaching in the fine arts. She studied at Laney College, Peralta Community College, and University of California, Berkeley, receiving her bachelor’s in fine arts from California State East Bay, Hayward in 1980. Together with fellow artist Ester Hernández, she assisted in the painting of the Mujeres Muralistas’ mural Latino America (1974). At Laney College she joined several groups, including Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o/x de Aztlán (MECHA) and El Teatro Calcetín. Nevel-Guerrero’s artworks are inspired by her dreams and Mexican and Indigenous cultures, interweaved with social and political justice themes. Her multiple murals include A Vision of Our Ancient Ways, Healing the Past, Present, and Future (1977) at La Cliníca de la Raza in East Oakland
Andres Cisnero-Galindo is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator whose work is marked by a strong sense of history, a commitment to community organizing, and experimentation. Germinating in the 1960s from the leftist politics of his native Tijuana Mexico. Andres’work took root in the Bay Area’s Chicano movement of the 1970s and through the decades has pursued an exploration of the Chicano experience. Andrés Cisneros-Galindo was born in Baja California in 1945. At age 14 he joined the studio of Hector Castellon in Tijuana, Mexico where he studied painting, drawing and sculpture. Andrés moved to the Bay Area in 1967 to pursue his passions – education and art. He graduated from California State University, Hayward, with a degree in Early Childhood Education and completed studies in printmaking and painting in Mexico in 1978. Cisneros-Galindo’s experiences in education range from lecturing at a Mexican university to directing the bilingual Centro Infantil de la Raza program.
Leslie Lopez affectionately known as "DIME", is a visual artist, born and raised in Oakland CA, she's well known for her funky graffiti letters, unique hand styles and culture work. She has a passion for painting in the streets with community, and creating beautiful, yet powerful, public art in the barrio. Dime comes from a humble, hardworking family whose parents migrated from Sinaloa and Michoacan, Mexico. She was introduced to murals and graffiti at a young age and her work is heavily influenced by her upbringings as a first gen Chicana, her Mexican culture, and her life experiences as a brown girl growing up in East Oakland. Many of her collaborations are painted with children, youth, and elders, and are seen in walls in the BayArea and beyond.While staying true to Graffiti - her first love - she is dedicated to bringing her style-writing to any surface centering joy, love and the fight for social justice. Dime, is a founding member of Few and Far Women. A member of BSK Bomb Squad Kingz and part of the collective core of EastSide Arts Alliance- where she developed her commitment and love for serving the people.