FESTIVAL ’90 : Chicanas Struggle Against Art World Exclusion : Exhibit: ‘Image and Identity’ asks why Chicanas are virtually absent from major Latino art shows.

As in most fields, women artists have a more difficult time “making it” than men artists, and the problem is compounded for those of Latino descent. But a show opening Saturday at Loyola Marymount’s Laband Art Gallery is chipping away at that problem.

Titled “Image and Identity: Recent Chicana Art from ‘La Reina del Pueblo de Los Angeles de la Porcincula,’ ” the exhibit features works by five women of Mexican heritage. The group complains that Chicana artists have been virtually passed over by major Latino art shows, including “Hispanic Art in the United States” at the L.A. County Museum of Art in early 1989; the recent European traveling show “Le Demon des Anges”; and to a lesser extent, “Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-85,” which opened last weekend at UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery.

“There have definitely been omissions, and this show will help (to make up for) a lot of those glaring ones that have happened recently,” said Sybil Venegas, curator of the exhibit, which includes five or six works each by photographer Laura Aguilar and painters Barbara Carrasco, Diane Gamboa, Margaret Garcia and Dolores Guerrero-Cruz.

In addition to racism and sexism, said the women of “Image and Identity,” there are several possible reasons for their difficulties.

Garcia noted that women artists often deal with more personal, introspective themes, and therefore may create work seen as “less universal.” Carrasco said Chicana artists addressed more political themes than men, which goes against the current trend of what she called “stereotypical” Chicano art. Gamboa believes women artists lack the camaraderie prevalent among men, and Guerrero-Cruz said that many women can’t produce a large enough body of work because of such additional concerns as raising families.

“A lot of times there is an underlying sexism that assumes that somehow men are more competent, and then (Chicanas) are put down on a cultural level as well,” said curator Venegas, who teaches Chicana and Mexican art history at East L.A. College and Cal State Long Beach. “Mexican females are really outside of the mainstream. Any one of these women could have been included in ‘Hispanic Art in the United States.’ ”

In that show, Venegas said, only 3 of 29 artists were women. In three other recent Latino shows, women account for 20% to 29% of the artists: “Le Demon des Anges” had four women in a pool of 20, “CARA,” has 41 women out of 169 artists, and four women are among the 14 in “Aqui y Alla,” running at L.A. Municipal Art Gallery.

“We have been excluded from a lot of the other shows, and the odds are against us in many ways as women,” Gamboa said. “It’s real obvious and hard to overcome, but it’s important for the few of us that are doing it to stick with it. This show will help us do that.”

Guerrero-Cruz agreed. “I am a woman and a Chicana--which gives me two strikes. But I think our time has come. It’s only recently that we’ve been complaining about it and have been able to start showing our works. This is the first Chicana show in which we have a large body of work that gives an accurate description of what we can actually do.”

There have been other Chicana shows, Venegas pointed out, but they have mostly been held at smaller, less respected community galleries. The last Chicana show in Los Angeles, she said, was in 1983 at SPARC Gallery.

“Something is happening here. We are finally going somewhere,” Venegas said, noting that the idea for the exhibit actually originated with Loyola Marymount’s Chicano student group. “This show will make a difference because with the Laband Gallery, this stuff is coming into the institutional level. And because it’s being institutionalized, people are going to see it as legitimate.”

Garcia also said the tide is turning. “Our work is going to be making the statements. There’s so much strength there that it can’t be bottled any more. It’s got to happen, because the work is meaningful and people will see that,” she said.

Echoed Guerrero-Cruz: “I think we’re going to surprise people. We really have some strong work, and we just haven’t been able to show it.