The Brown Dot Project
Conceptual painter, printmaker, installation and digital artist Linda Vallejo’s overarching interest throughout the diverse stylistic and material phases of her career has been and remains the complex social dynamic surrounding individual and group identity. Her work has traced the progress of a narrative launched as an examination of her own heritage and the multivalent legacies of its influence on the sensibilities of her artistic and social consciousness.
SHANA NYS DAMBROT, ART CRITIC & CURATOR
Datos Sagrados: 30% of US Population will be Latino in 2050, 2017 | 22 in diameter | goauche, handmade paper
Datos Sagrados: 65% of US Latinos are US Native-Born, 2017 | 12 in diameter | gouache, handmade paper
Los Angeles 48.3% II, 2015 | 24 x 24 in | archival marker on gridded vellum
23.9% of Sex Trafficking Victims are Latino (2011), 2017 | 11 x 8.5 in | colored pencil, archival marker, and pigment print of repurposed photograph on paper
National Latino Artists 9.12%, 2016 | 11 x 8.5 in | colored pencil, archival marker, and pigment print on paper
35% of US Latinos Voted for Trump (2017), 2017 | 11 x 8.5 in | colored pencil, archival marker, and pigment print of repurposed photograph on paper
38% of Latinos in LA County Own Their Own Home, 2019 | 8.5 x 11 in | colored pencil, archival marker, pigment print of repurposed photograph, paper
91.2% of Los Angeles’ Eastside Community is Latino (2018), 2019 | 8.5 x 11 in | colored pencil, archival marker, pigment print of repurposed photograph, paper
34.1% of Cafeteria Attendants are Latina, 2017 | 8.5 x 11 in | colored pencil, gouache, pigment print of repurposed postcard, paper
The Brown Dot Project is an elegant solution to a series of complex questions about simple facts, that is, data about Latino life in the United States. Vallejo is literally counting one Latino at a time, brown dot by brown dot! The process is exhaustive, and often exhausting, taking several hours to design and complete.
Vallejo studies a variety of sets of data, including topics such as the number of Latinos in any given city or state, the national number of Latino executives, the number of Latinos involved in the American Civil war.
Digitized ephemera from exhibitions, publications, and special projects, hundreds of art images with details, and a video library.
