I am a queer, Chicana, single mother, born and raised in Oxnard, CA. I grew up in poverty with my Catholic family who immigrated from Mexico seeking better opportunities for me and my siblings. With a tumultuous upbringing revolving around mental and traditional health issues, drug-use, and teen parenting, I turned to the Punk subculture as a second family. I became heavily immersed in the Oxnard and Los Angeles Latine Punk scene where I was able to explore my identity in an unprejudiced environment. 

My current work is ethnographic in nature, centering around the exploration of duality; carefully examining the natural juxtaposition within visual and contextual aspects of my cultural upbringing through the lens of individual as well as community identity. Through mundane objects and cultural motifs, we are able to see this juxtaposition. A talavera tile is delicately hand painted, but mortared by working class individuals. A bandana is an ornate, patterned handkerchief, but is used to wipe the sweat of hard working laborers. There is always a counterbalance. An intrinsic link between good and evil, happy and sad. This melding of the mundane and identity stems from my conceptual use of Rasquachismo. Rasquache means discards or leftovers, but was used as a classist term to describe ghetto. Rasquachismo is rooted in the notion that  the underdogs or lower class are always making the most from the least. I use an interdisciplinary approach in my work as a catalyst for exploring these cultural juxtapositions with the use of printmaking, oil painting, mosaic, and ceramics with a focus on textures, symbolism, and the methodology of removal. 

For all inquiries, please contact me via email: rissamartinez116@gmail.com