Chicana aesthetics: A view of unconcealed alterities and affirmations of Chicana identity through Laura Aguilar's photographic images

This research presents a complex critique of art and culture through an analysis and evaluation of Laura Aguilar's photographic images, her role as the artist, and her contributions to unfixing the traditional and marginalized feminine body. I argue that photographer Laura Aguilar provides a counter-narrative to cultural patriarchy and Western essentialist hegemonic identification. Through artistic epistemological and theoretical aesthetic expression, Laura Aguilar has developed an oppositional discourse that challenges racial stereotypes, discrimination, social inequalities, representation, sexuality, and femininity.;This paper contextualizes Laura Aguilar photographic images and presents her aesthetic portrayals of the female body. Through a visual representation of Chicana feminist aesthetics, Aguilar unconceals and reconstructs the female body, reclaims "space", and evokes reclamation identification by revealing new interpretations, and revealing perspectives of Chicana identity. Moreover, Aguilar draws from Chicana feminist theory to contests patriarchal hegemonic discourse, which she believes threatens to render Chicanas invisible or marginal.