Barbara Carrasco is one of the most important artists to emerge during the Chicano movement in Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s, who spent decades working alongside activists like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and some of the movement’s most well-known artists, like painter Carlos Almaraz and performance artist Harry Gamboa, Jr.
And yet, so many people don’t know her name.
I learned about her for the first time in 2024, when her monumental 1981 mural L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective found a permanent home at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. It had been the victim of attempted censorship so many years ago.
Rather than agree to alter a mural that challenged conventional narratives of Los Angeles history by centering Indigenous, Mexican, and working-class experiences - and confronting histories the city had long avoided, including the Chinese Massacre of 1871, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the violence of the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots - Carrasco refused to compromise. Instead, she stored the mural, disassembled in pieces, in her studio for nearly half a century.
It was the act of a woman who would not be silenced, would not compromise, and understood the power of art to shape public memory.
After decades of being celebrated within Chicano art communities but overlooked by larger art institutions, Carrasco is now receiving the broader institutional and market recognition her work has long deserved - including a solo exhibition at Charlie James Gallery, On The Edge, which closes July 18, 2026.
Barbara and I spoke about the exhibition, her lifelong practice of transforming frustration and anger into art that empowers, and the role artists can play in advancing movements for social and racial justice.
Barbara Carrasco
I’m just really happy where I’m at right now, making art in the Santa Monica Airport with 36 other artists. I’ve only been there for two and a half years, and it’s really a great place to be.
Bianca Collins
Is it still run by 18th Street? It’s the former Arena 1 Gallery.
Barbara Carrasco
No. It used to be run by 18th Street, it’s now operated by CARS – you know, Community Arts Resources.
Bianca Collins
Oh, right.
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah, they’re really good. They really care about the artists. We all feel really supported by CARS.
Bianca Collins
Back in the day I organized a show at Arena 1, before 18th Street took over – an art auction for A Window Between Worlds. They produce and fund therapeutic art curriculum that’s placed in human service organizations. They help people transform their trauma through art making. They used to have a benefit auction every year, and we would present it at Arena 1.
Is CARS still hosting open studios for the artists every month?
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah, they do that on a regular basis. And they’re doing artist spotlights - they’ll videotape an artist interview and then they put it on their website, because even during open studios, it’s hard to have a conversation with anybody. It’s like an opening, you know, so you can’t really have a conversation. It’s just really difficult.
Bianca Collins
That’s right.
Barbara Carrasco
And nobody’s really paying attention to kids, you know, so I suggested that they have a separate room where the kids can go and paint or draw or whatever. So we’ll see if they do that.
Bianca Collins
That’s a good idea. So are you usually there for the open studio events, if someone wants to meet you?
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah, I am, yeah. I think it’s important to be there.
Bianca Collins
That’s fantastic.
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah. My good friend May Sun just joined. One of her light boxes is at Hauser & Wirth right now. She does a lot of public art. Now she’s really focusing on personal work, smaller works, and she’s going to have a retrospective at ICA. I really like her because I’ve known her for a while. We both went to UCLA and we’re friends with Richard Wyatt - he was a really good artist, and he did murals, and he’s in Agnès Varda’s film Mur Murs (1981), about murals in LA, and I’m in that film too, and my husband’s work, Harry Gamboa, who’s a co-founder of Asco. Do you know about their work?
Bianca Collins
Yeah, definitely. I didn’t realize that you were married to him.
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah, we were friends for a very long time. I never thought I’d marry him because we’re just so different. We’re like night and day, but I think that works well.
Anyway, there’s so many things running around in my head right now, because On The Edge took so much energy. I was working on the new works, the portraits of the detained children. But at the same time, I was extremely depressed over what happened with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. I think everybody who ever met Cesar or worked with Cesar felt that way, too. It was just so hard to accept.
Bianca Collins
Yeah. I’m sure.
Barbara Carrasco
And I worked with him a lot for 15 years, and I never saw anything inappropriate. But I am very good friends with Dolores Huerta, and I believe her when she told her story…
Bianca Collins
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, but we don’t need to dive right in. Why don’t I just work my way through these questions that I have and I’ll help guide us through this conversation?
Barbara Carrasco
Alright, sure.
Bianca Collins
So, it was really cool to learn in the gallery copy that you were the first female editor of UCLA’s campus newspaper, La Gente.
Barbara Carrasco
Oh, yeah.
Bianca Collins
They were running your drawings as cover art before you were even a student! I’m so curious to learn how that came to be, and also wondering how your experience working with a campus newspaper like La Gente primed you to become the artist that you have become.
Barbara Carrasco
Well, I started off as a city editor, and my former boyfriend was the editor. I suggested to him that I was going to run for editor, and – you know, it’s really weird – he said, “It’s your last year at UCLA. Why do you want to do that?” I go, “Well, you did it. I think I can do it, too.” We just celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the newspaper.
Bianca Collins
Wow.
Barbara Carrasco
I was just so happy to meet all the women who followed me – the women who became editors. Because when I was selected by the communications board, all the men on the newspaper quit. It was like a weird, weird reaction. But they came back after. I was talking to them and I go, “Wow, what happened? I became editor, and then you guys drop right when I need you.”
Bianca Collins
Yeah, man.
Barbara Carrasco
But they came back, thank God.
It’s really perfect timing, because on campus, there’s going to be a Latinx center in one of the dorms. I lived in Dykstra Hall - in the dorms - with my sister. They’re going to have a mural that I’m helping the students do. The students want to focus on the history of activism on campus.
Bianca Collins
Wow.
Barbara Carrasco
See, I think that’s what really motivated me when I did all the illustrations for the front covers of La Gente - the reaction those covers had from different community members. That was the first time I showed Pregnant Woman in a Ball of Yarn (1977).
Bianca Collins
Yeah?
Barbara Carrasco
That piece was on one of the covers, and it was a really strong work of art. I mean, it was a personal drawing that I did, reacting to my brother’s pronouncement that his wife couldn’t go to college; that she had to go to stay home and take care of the baby. I did that drawing one night when I was so upset. It was a lithograph print, on a very thin tin plate. It was 1977 when I did that. Just recently, about a year and a half ago, I approached El Nopal Press – you know, Francesco Cicadas, who’s a master printer – I asked him if he could open up the plate, and he said, “Barbara, it’s so old, it might just disintegrate when I try to print it,” and I go, “Well, I trust you. You’re very good.” So he did a really good job. So we made an edition of 38 of them.
Bianca Collins
Wow, that’s so great they were able to salvage it.
Barbara Carrasco
It’s been exhibited in a lot of shows and it was in Linda Gordon’s book…
Bianca Collins
What about Angry Pregnant Lady (1979)? What inspired that piece?
Barbara Carrasco
I was in the studio with really good artists, called Centro de Arte Público, in Highland Park. And I was really frustrated being the only female there, and hearing all these really talented guys talking about women, their conquests here and there – and I had to tell them, I go, “I don’t want to hear those stories, you know? I actually know the women.” So, that was really frustrating. I did that drawing because I was angry.
Bianca Collins
Were you pregnant at the time?
Barbara Carrasco
No, not even close. I guess, I felt so frustrated that I wanted to get married and have a kid, and it just wasn’t meant to be for many years. It was a lot, I guess, because a lot of my friends were pregnant at the time, and when I went to my 10-year high school reunion, everybody had already had kids, and I didn’t. And I wasn’t married, either, and I remember everybody saying, “When are you going to get married? Wouldn’t you have kids?” And that was the furthest thing from my mind. I really liked traveling and working on different murals with different artists. So, you know, that took precedence over money to a kid.
Bianca Collins
That’s great that you’re going to be working with the students at UCLA on that mural, and that they’re interested in activism on campus. I’m sure you have a lot of thoughts on everything that’s been going on with free speech on campuses, especially at UCLA.
Barbara Carrasco
I see all these other women doing protest art - the No Kings thing, and their take on it is very different from mine. I mean, the same kind of anger, but culturally different.
Bianca Collins
How have you seen activism on campuses transform? Do you think people are more bold now? Or, how have you seen it shift?
Barbara Carrasco
I really like the idea that young people are seeing how important it is to raise their voices, to have their disagreements with what’s going on made public. All the rights that everybody fought for are being taken away, dismantled, and democracy itself has been threatened. It’s really scary times that we’re living in. I really think we’re fortunate to be artists, to create something and reflect what’s going on through visual images. It’s very frustrating to see people not say anything.
Bianca Collins
Do you still identify as an activist?
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah, I do. I always have. When Charlie [James] first approached me, when he came to my studio, I was really really surprised and happy that he liked the portraits of the detained kids. He said, “Is there any way you could do, like, 6 more of those?” and I was surprised because most gallerists don’t want to see real political work. They say, it’s not going to sell, who wants to put a painting of a detained kid on their wall?
I talk to a lot of older political artists, friends of mine, and a lot of them say, well, you know, it doesn’t sell – so I might as well just do like, decorative art. And I could never do that. I just – I mean, I have done some stuff that’s very personal. Did you see that one piece called Codex Carrasco (1991)?
Bianca Collins
Yes.
Barbara Carrasco
That was really personal. And I loved doing it. But when you do something real personal, people can identify with it, too. I mean, this guy came up to me and he goes, “Oh, that’s the same type of army man I had!” He really liked it. “We grew up poor like you did, and had those kinds of foods,” – you know, fake foods. I call them fake foods: Carnation milk and Tang and Spam. But that’s what I really like, the fact that it reflects their experiences as well as mine.
I do think that not saying anything is also a political statement.
Bianca Collins
You’re so associated with The United Farm Workers of America, but right now, would you say your attention has shifted onto the detaining of children? Is that where you feel like you’re most strongly advocating to be changed at the moment?
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah. It’s a real travesty that they’re not only detaining kids, but they’re depriving them of good quality food and care. It’s really disgusting to me that that’s, you know, tolerated. My daughter’s now 32, but I can’t imagine someone not feeding her properly, or not clothing her properly. The young girls there are on their cycles, and a lot of them are not given sanitary items.
Bianca Collins
I wonder if you can point to moments in your lifetime of activism when the art you made was directly part of a solution or a change… what about with the United Farm Workers movement? Did you create any art back then that was utilized during the movement?
Barbara Carrasco
I created so many banners. They’re huge gigantic banners for conventions and for different events. The biggest one I ever created was a 30’ x 30’ banner. Cesar wanted to expand the union worldwide, so I had this big map on there. The only thing that was really frustrating about doing all those banners was the time. They would give me really short notice to do these enormous banners, because they weren’t an arts organization, they were, you know, labor. And I remember Gloria Steinem one time came to one of the conventions, and she said that Cesar had told her that I do all the banners. And she was like, “Barbara, why haven’t I met you before?” and I go, “Well, that’s easy to explain – you were on stage, and I was underneath the stage, passed out from doing that banner in such a short amount of time.”
Bianca Collins
Wow. So, it’s really about bringing attention to the movement, the artwork.
Barbara Carrasco
Cesar told me that it was the first time people actually wrote him letters – which I never got copies of. I should have insisted on getting copies of them. But he said that people really liked my simple kind of graphic style, because the artist who preceded me was Carlos Almaraz, who did like really complex sketches and paintings of farm workers in the fields.
I have most of the banners that I did for the farm workers, they kept them – I didn’t keep any of them. But I do have the maquette for a smaller version of the funeral banner that I did when he died. It’s about the size of the banners that are hanging in Charlie James’ gallery, on the bottom floor.
Bianca Collins
Yes. I wanted to ask you about those.
Barbara Carrasco
You know, that was my MFA show at CalArts.
Bianca Collins
I noticed the announcement poster. You had all of these names listed that I wanted to know more about – why they were thanked, and how you met them. Now I understand that Harry’s your husband, but Robbie Conal and Dolores Huerta – of course – and Edward James Olmos… why were these people on the project poster?
Barbara Carrasco
Well, Edward James Olmos, I met him when I was 23 years old working on the Zoot Suit mural on the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood. I was helping Carlos Almaraz and John Valadez do the mural. At first, they were reluctant to let me work on it. I didn’t know them, and I just introduced myself to them, and I said, “I paint portraits really well. I’d love to work with you guys.” And so they hired me based on what I showed them.
Bianca Collins
So cool.
Barbara Carrasco
And then I missed a financial aid deadline for CalArts, which, you know, was a very expensive school to go to, and so, Eddie helped me financially - which, you know, I paid him back. And Robbie has always been really supportive. I remember when I did my first solo show at the B-1 Gallery in Santa Monica – Robert Berman, it was his gallery – and, and he didn’t want to give it to me because I was a muralist in his eyes. And [Robbie] said, “No, but you should see her drawings, her drawings are really good.” So, Robert gave me this solo exhibition, and they were all really intricate drawings, and it got really good reviews. Right after that show, Robert Berman says, “You can have a show anytime you want.”
Bianca Collins
Wow.
Barbara Carrasco
Robert Berman, he’s now at Bergamot. He still has a gallery there. But he was the first person to open his doors to give Chicano artists, specifically, a chance to show their work. He’s a good guy. Robbie’s always been really supportive and I just really like his work. I like what he does and he’s been consistently doing the same type of political work - posters. He’s been one of those people that has never changed his work.
Bianca Collins
So, why is the body of work called Bang?
Barbara Carrasco
Oh, I selected that term because those people that I depicted on the banners, because of their commitment to social justice, they all faced threats – death threats.
Bianca Collins
You have that self-portrait from 2025, Self Portrait in a Time of Crisis. What about the self-portrait to you represents how you respond in a time of crisis?
Barbara Carrasco
Well, I wanted to show that it was sort of like a tornado hitting us. That show was at the airport, with 30-some-odd artists. Everything was chaotic, you know? I mean, just to have everything that everybody fought for just totally thrown out the window, nobody had any rights, people get arrested without any due cause. We were at the studio. There was ICE agents in our parking lot. They had arrested somebody outside the airport and then brought them into our space. And I remember, everybody got so scared. Those guys look scary. And somebody said, “Don’t go outside. There’s ICE agents there.” So I, in turn, knocked on my neighbor’s door, who’s Iranian, and I told her not to go outside, the ICE agents are there, and she immediately started crying. A lot of people in the studios were surprised. And I go, “Well, I’m not surprised. She knows what fascism is about in her country,” you know?
Bianca Collins
Yeah.
Barbara Carrasco
But we don’t – we’re starting to realize what it’s about, here, now.
Bianca Collins
Yeah. I thought maybe it was also: in times of crisis, your weapon is your paint brush.
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah, that’s true. I kept telling the artists, “You know, we’re very fortunate to be artists… just to be able to create something out of nothing. Out of a canvas, out of cardboard, or whatever materials are around.” I mean, not too many people are capable of doing that.
Bianca Collins
I also really love the self-portrait from ‘84 with the references to whitewashing and Siqueiros’ name on the paintbrush, and the Olympian… I assume that these are references to both of your murals being whitewashed.
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah. They are.
Bianca Collins
Is the grid a reference also to the way that you transfer images to murals?
Barbara Carrasco
It’s a direct commentary on what happened with Siqueiros in 1932. And the similarities are not just – there’s so many. His mural was like 2 feet longer, or shorter than mine. The dimensions are almost identical. He was told to do this ideal kind of vision of Los Angeles, and he decided to show an Indigenous guy on a cross. He did that in one night, and there were really famous people helping him - Jackson Pollock’s brother was working on that mural.
I got a chance to meet his widow years later. When I graduated from UCLA, I went to Mexico City, and I met with Angelica, his widow, and she showed me these really great images of his that he was doing, and told me he never wanted that mural restored. He wanted it to stay whitewashed so that everybody could know that he – it – was whitewashed. So, when The Getty went there and was trying to save the mural, they painstakingly took the whitewashed paint off the mural, exposing the real colors of the mural. I think what they did was so great. Because, you can still tell that it’s been altered.
Bianca Collins
But this image is your self-portrait. So, it’s you responding to it?
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah. I was angry. I showed the white roller paint coming across. You know, that’s a 17-color silk screen print. Nobody does 17 colors. That’s a lot of work, but the printer at the time, he was really good – Stephen Grace – I remember him saying he wanted to work with me because he knew I was into detail. Anyway, I did want to show the mural; the background, that’s how people start a mural, the grid.
Bianca Collins
In the gallery copy, it says that the scale of the Dolores painting and the style of screen printing communicates “immediacy.” What does that mean?
Barbara Carrasco
Oh, I don’t really understand that either… But, you know, the silkscreen print itself, the way I cut it, every single color is cut. But when you paint it, immediacy is not one word I’d use to describe it. It was a lot of work. It doesn’t look like it, but it was a lot of work. When you do something super simple, all the details have to be really precise. It really shows up. Mistakes show up more when you blow it up.
Bianca Collins
So was it originally a screen print and then you painted it in larger scale?
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah.
Bianca Collins
Or is it just in the style of a screen print?
Barbara Carrasco
No, it’s supposed to look like the actual silk screen print.
Bianca Collins
So, when did you print the original silk screen piece?
Barbara Carrasco
In 1999, I did the print.
Bianca Collins
Oh, wow.
Barbara Carrasco
Shepard Fairey, we were on a panel together and he kept commenting on how much he loved the print. He kept saying, the graphic style is really great, the style of the lettering. He liked everything. I think he was definitely inspired by it to do the Obama portrait, if you look at the whole portrait. Because when the National Portrait Gallery purchased the Dolores print years later, they asked me if I was inspired by Shepard Fairey’s portrait.
Bianca Collins
Oh my gosh. I’m sure he was, there’s an order of operations here… and that’s okay.
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah. And so I said, well, “If you look at the dates, mine came first and then that came way, way later.”
I think he’s really good at what he does. He’s very prolific.
Bianca Collins
But you steal like an artist, you know – you all find inspiration from one another. That’s the way it goes.
I’m gonna give you some more general questions as we wrap up here, moving away from the specific works in the exhibition to thinking a bit more philosophically about your practice and the things that you care about. I want to know: what are you paying attention to that others might overlook?
Barbara Carrasco
I think that even with this series of detained kids, I wanted to focus on the pain that those kids were going through. And, I think that I just barely touched upon it. I wish I could actually go to one of those detention camps and see what the kids are doing, in terms of drawing. They must be drawing images that are really sad to look at, you know? I remember, a couple of my friends were saying, “Well, who’s going to want to look at a kid who’s detained?” I said, but they’re beautiful kids. That’s the thing – the beauty draws people in, but the pain is what they’re going to think about.
Bianca Collins
Yeah.
Barbara Carrasco
The kids are actually behind a chain link fence. They can’t go anywhere. They have to stay in, and, and it’s just awful.
Bianca Collins
I think that little boy with the bunny ear hat and the backpack really impacted a lot of people. It was like one of the only images that people saw of a detained child.
Barbara Carrasco
Oh, that’s really true.
Throughout the history of art, a lot of artists have shown psychological trauma. I’ve been looking at Francis Bacon’s work, and I think he was really intense. I mean, people say that he had all these personal problems, and that’s one thing, but his painting – I think he was way ahead of his time. There was just nobody who used a brush the way he did. I want to get to that point, where I can show right away what people are going through.
Bianca Collins
Yeah, well, emotion is sort of abstract. It makes sense that he was able to do so without, like, direct representation, you know? Like, something about emotion is hard to capture, I think.
Barbara Carrasco
Yeah, I think so too.
I’m a cancer survivor, so, when I was in the hospital, I had to stay there for 36 days going through a bone marrow transplant.
Bianca Collins
Wow.
Barbara Carrasco
And my friend, Jennifer Goldman came by and she gave me a sketchbook and some pencils, and I was so out of it. I was all drugged up and everything. I did really crazy drawings that I, to this day, I haven’t shown anybody, because it’s just so, so weird.
All the kids at Children’s Hospital, I saw them go through everything I went through. When I was going through the bone marrow transplant, it was at the unit across the street from Children’s Hospital - it’s no longer there, they moved it to City of Hope - but the kids were calling me up and telling me they were praying for me. I always really liked kids - ever since I was really young, I liked working with kids. There were so many programs in the housing projects that came in there and helped us. The first time I ever went to a museum was through a program that bussed us to different museums.
Bianca Collins
Oh my gosh, wow.
Barbara Carrasco
And UCLA, that’s the first time I ever went to UCLA, was through a similar program in the housing projects.
Bianca Collins
Wow.
Barbara Carrasco
Anyway, so that’s why I thought, as soon as I got to a position in life where I could do the same thing, I would work with kids.
Bianca Collins
What’s a question you wish more people asked you?
Barbara Carrasco
Who were the artists who influenced me? People are surprised that I was influenced by Botticelli and Michelangelo. I was so fortunate to have really good art teachers at UCLA. I had a guy named Jim Valerio, and Jon Duci. They were great artists. One professor told me that I had a real delicate line and then said, “Well, you kind of draw like Botticelli.” So, I started looking at Botticelli more and I said, “Oh, I do see that.” Also, the Masters – all the techniques that they used lend themselves to doing real delicate stuff.
Bianca Collins
Mm-hmm.
Barbara Carrasco
Silver point is a really old technique. Nobody uses it anymore. I had a big show at the Vincent Price Art Museum – it was a mid-career survey show and I had all these silver point drawings in there. I used to look at drawings by Salvador Dalí of his wife at the Santa Barbara Museum. They were done with silver point., I want to get back into it more, but they don’t make that paper anymore. I think in Europe, they probably do have it somewhere. I have to keep looking for it.
Bianca Collins
All right. And last question – I’m ending every conversation as part of Conversations & Curiosities with this question: What are you feeling curious about right now?
Barbara Carrasco
I’m curious to see what kind of images I’m gonna allow myself to put onto paper or canvas. I’ve been really careful, and I’m curious when I’m not careful. Because I was told that by a professor at UCLA, that he noticed that I did better work when I was not concentrating on the work. I go, well maybe that’s the unconscious – well, I know they don’t say that anymore – but you know, like your inner self really coming out and being transferred onto canvas or paper. I think there’s a lot more I have to say about a lot of stuff, but doing it in different mediums. So, I want to try sculpture.
Bianca Collins
I can’t wait to see what comes next from you. Thank you so much, Barbara, for giving me so much time.
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