(San Francisco, CA): Self-published (and sold in the legendary SF Comic book company on 23rd street) 1990-1995. An amazing collection of 71 unused “hot peel” designs reflecting Chicano t-shirt art over a five year period. Many people chose to identify themselves as Chicanos during the Chicano Movement in the 60's by wearing t-shirts. The shirts were made as a unique, and growing symbol that the person wearing the shirt identified with, and approved of the Movement’s legislation. Wearing Chicano t-shirts was a choice that symbolized a fight for Chicanismo, “an eclectic ideology that at times has drawn inspiration from the Black experience, the Latin American revolutionary experience, and the Mexican Revolutionary tradition” in order to represent their culture and ambition to fight for the civil rights denied to them. These contemporary, Chicano t-shirts were part of the mainstream and no longer live in the historical context of the ardent civil rights/Chicano Movement in which the t-shirts were first introduced. The change in the way Chicano t-shirts are produced and the alteration of the original graphics reflect the evolution of Chicano politics from the Chicano Movement in the 60's to the early 90s. These Chicano t-shirts designs have juxtaposed Mexican iconography with American culture to create a neo Mexican-American t-shirt showing some aspects of assimilation whilst retaining a distinct Chicano identity, with themes of immigrant life, low rider and car culture, oldies, catholicism, drug abuse, street life and the ditch party scene. A wonderful collection offering an insight into Chicano t-shirt fashion of the early 90s.
