Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are three social media platforms that allow people to interact despite physical proximity and time zones. Advanced technology is responsible for this unprecedented level of access to others and to information. With such ability, people digitally create art and share it online. Though online interactions generally occur between two people, such as an artist and their followers, I want to examine a different type of interaction. In this paper, I will review interactions that occur between artists and their digital art. More specifically I will consider questions that involve how a person’s identity is translated into their art about the Latinx community. I identify as a young mixed-race Latinx woman who has ancestors from the Dominican Republic and was raised with aspects of that country’s culture as well as with parts of my Trinidadian culture. My cultural experience as a woman born and raised in the United States is what will inform my analysis of five pieces of Latinx art. Questions that I will use to guide my analysis include:

1. “How is art ‘Latinx’”
2. “What is the role of Latinx art”
and
3. “Who makes Latinx art?”

These research questions have led me to the digital art of Yocelyn Riojas and Miriam Flores. These artists use she/her pronouns and identify as Latinx. Throughout my research, I primarily focus on the third question and will include art made by Ashley Lukashevsky, who I determine to be a non-Latinx artist. All of this art was accessible either via an artist’s Instagram account or from media coverage about them. My aim is to determine whether art about the Latinx community has to be made by and for Latinx people or, if like its community, there is fluidity in Latinx art. 

In order to fairly consider my questions, I will follow a particular outline that allows me to analyze each art individually and in comparison to the other artwork. This ensures that I have answers to questions one and two that are supported by my analysis before I move to question three.  I will review Riojas’s first and second artwork, and do the same with Flores’s first and second pieces of art. Then, I will identify the similarities and differences between Riojas and Flores before an initial attempt to answer my research questions. At this point, I will elaborate on my current understanding of Latinx art and analyze Lukashevsky’s art with this understanding in mind. Next, I will take the conclusions that I draw about Lukashevsky’s piece and compare that to my findings from the artwork of Riojas and Flores. Finally, I will revisit the questions and address the status of each.

1. Essay Introduction
2. Meet the Artists
3. Yocelyn Riojas: 1st Art Piece
4. Yocelyn Riojas: 2nd Art Piece
5. Miriam Flores: 1st Art Piece
6. Miriam Flores: 2nd Art Piece
7. Comparison of Riojas' and Flores' Art
8. Does This Art Provide Answers?
9. Third Artist Ashley Lukashevsky: 1st Art Piece
10. Conclusion: What Questions Remain?
11. Works Cited