{"data":{"id":"15041","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":15041,"topgoose_id":104,"tms_id":15041,"display_name":"Asco","sort_name":"Asco","display_date":"1972–1987","begin_date":"1972","end_date":"1987","biography":"\u003cp\u003eFueled by the Chicano civil rights movement of the late 1960s and the punk underground of the early 1970s, the collective Asco was founded in East Los Angeles by the artists \u003ca href=\"/artists/t3649\"\u003eHarry Gamboa Jr.\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"/artists/5483\"\u003eGronk\u003c/a\u003e, Willie Herrón, and \u003ca href=\"/artists/15043\"\u003ePatssi Valdez\u003c/a\u003e, and included other artists over the course of the group’s fifteen-year history. Asco means \u003cem\u003edisgust or nausea\u003c/em\u003e in Spanish and aptly expressed the young artists’ aversion to America’s unjust social and political landscape. The group developed a highly stylized body of work that reflected their avant-garde sensibility and activist impulses. They staged guerilla performances in the streets in protest of mainstream establishments, including the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Catholic Church, and Hollywood.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was LA’s all-pervasive movie industry that provided rich source material for Asco’s important “No Movie” series, conceptual works that existed as carefully staged photographs, performative actions, published texts, mail art, and media hoaxes. The “No Movies” satirized the Hollywood machine while interrogating both the lack of Chicanos in the media and the stereotypical depictions of them when they were present. For \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/44726\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eDecoy Gang War\nVictim\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, Asco mailed a photograph of\nGronk posed as a casualty of gang violence\nto several local press outlets, one of\nwhich broadcast it on television as a real\nincident. The simulated event exposed\nthe media’s bias toward East Los Angeles’s\nbarrio community and revealed the ways\nin which the press helped perpetuate\nnot only these racial, social, and economic\nstereotypes but the violence itself.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":false,"collection":true,"ulan_id":null,"wikidata_id":null,"created_at":"2017-08-30T15:29:07.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-01-28T18:03:28.723-05:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/15041/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/15041/exhibitions"}}}}