Memories of a dyke bar in East LA: for Laura Aguilar

"An unabashed exploration that steers her outlaw body.” Raquel Gutiérrez celebrates the work of the late Laura Aguilar whose photography shone a light on marginalised Lesbian Latina communities. "Aguilar’s artistic corpus is only now circulating in institutional ways. The Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell retrospective travelled to Miami and opened at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum six weeks before Aguilar’s death. Aguilar’s 1993 photograph ‘Will Work For,’ a self-portrait centring Aguilar holding a cardboard sign that reads 'Artist Will Work For Axcess,' in front of a building with the word GALLERY prominently displayed reminds us twenty-five years later of the cultural precariat’s means towards eking out a life. Aguilar endured as much danger alive as the opportunities her oeuvre will have in her death. Aguilar’s prescient images brought to life the crumbling edges brown artists are compelled to navigate, the terrain she moved through as her name came to national and international platforms."