LOS ANGELES, CA.- parrasch heijnen announced the Hammer Museum has acquired Mi Cultura (1977) by Linda Vallejo for the museum’s Contemporary Collection.

The Hammer Contemporary Collection is a dynamic and growing collection of international contemporary art since 1960 with a special focus on Los Angeles-based artists and works on paper.

Linda Vallejo (b. 1951, Los Angeles, CA) creates imagery drawn from her beliefs about the cosmos, creation and the interlacing relationship between women and the earth. Her work is an amalgamation of aesthetics reflecting cultural memory, knowledge and her own life experiences of Latino, Chicano, and American indigenous culture and communities resulting in a Chicana feminist decolonial practice. Exploring relationships to nature and the spiritual legacy of her Mexican heritage, Vallejo creates works diverse in technique and style using a variety of media.

The work on paper, Mi Cultura, represents a metamorphosis for the artist in becoming one with the earth. Parallel with the making of this work, Vallejo immersed herself in the study and practice of indigenous ceremonies, participating in Maya and Aztec ritual dances and examining the remaining physical traces of Mesoamerican places of worship. Vallejo pulls specific Aztec symbols of corn and the sun learned from her travels through Mexico, directly connecting the work to her Chicana heritage. Here, the physical body serves as a connection between the past and the future; a conduit for the spiritual energy which flows between past lives and future births, forever connected to the earth and the spirits watching over it.

Vallejo received her MFA in Printmaking from California State University, Long Beach in 1978. In 1975, Vallejo was one of the early art teachers at Self-Help Graphics Barrio Mobile Art Studio, an arts non-profit primarily serving the Latino community of East Los Angeles with arts education, printmaking and support, and an incubator of the Chicano art movement. Recent solo shows include Linda Vallejo: Brown Baroque, CSU San Bernardino Fullerton Museum, Santa Barbara, CA (2023); Linda Vallejo: Brown Belongings, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Los Angeles, CA (2019-2020); Keepin’ it Brown, Getty Foundation Initiative PST: LA/LA, CA (2017); and Make ‘Em All Mexican, Texas A&M University Reynolds Gallery, Collegetown, TX (2016). Permanent collections include the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, CA; the Museum of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, CA; Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; East Los Angeles College Vincent Price Museum, Los Angeles CA; National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA; UC Santa Barbara, California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA), Santa Barbara, CA; and the UCLA Chicano Study Research Center (CSRC), Los Angeles, CA. parrasch heijnen is currently showing a solo exhibition for Linda Vallejo: Select Works, 1969-2024.