ARTIST STATEMENT A SUNDAY AFTERNOON CAPTURING “THE COLORLESS ONES” ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JATTE (2002) By Los Anthropolocos - Robert J. Sanchez and Richard A. Lou LOS ANTHROPOLOCOS Richard A. Lou & Robert J. Sanchez "There has never been a free people, a free country, a real democracy on the face of this Earth. In a city of some 300,000 slaves and 90,000 so called free men, Plato sat down and praised freedom in exquisitely elegant phrases." Lerone Bennett Jr. Los Anthropolocos is an ongoing fictional narrative about the exploits of two futuristic Chicano anthropologists/archaeologists, Dr. Ritchie A. Lou and Dr. Bobby J. Sanchez, who discover and study white ethnicity. The Colorless Empire (Caucasians) is believed to be extinct and in its stead is the triumphant Chicano nation of United Aztlan. Using what one would consider the Swiftian model of parody and satire, we as Los Anthropolocos, dismantle the System from the usual players, in which, the "normal" relationships of power are reversed. Instead of Caucasian anthropologists perusing and ascribing meaning to the remains of some exotic culture, Chicano anthropologists, operating within the same parameters of Scientific Inquiry and, of course, the expressed authority of the status quo, peruse and declare meaning to the remains of the White Race or as we have coined "them", the "Colorless." Outside the zany and absurd antics of Los Anthropolocos is the paralleling that occurs within both the fictional narrative and the real. What occurs is the System is examined without the tacit approval of "Who" is doing the defining? Chicanos are the Dominant Culture with the authority to display, define and thus control. The Colorless as a culture becomes a benchmark from which the Chicano Elite can claim a more evolved and civilized population. The dehumanization process as a system, as an institution becomes evident. The artwork examines how communities use images and language to dehumanize "outsiders" in order to ignore the "outsiders" basic human rights. It challenges unquestioned claims to territory and legal status. The artwork cannot be dissected from the history of our Chicano community. As Chicanos we cannot escape the fact that we live in occupied territory and that we are the subjugated. We are inculcated on these matters on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, as real lived and relived experiences. Seurat's classic meditation on the poetics of a refined society and its cultural practices is ironically interrupted by Los Anthropolocos (The Crazy Anthropologists) posing stoically while on a “safari,” in pursuit of the fabled “Colorless Ones” (a supposedly extinct specious of the human race). The Chicano artists Robert J. Sanchez and Richard A. Lou (Los Anthropolocos) sit reflectively, with their two prized White specimens between them, as they assess and evaluate the monumental anthropological task that lies before them. Appropriating Seurat's masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte, 1884-86), Los Anthropolocos have transposed the politics of identity and race. Also, they have subverted Seurat's “revolutionary” formalist attempt in developing Pointillism (a method of painting that relied upon the observer's eye to mix the dots/points of colors) through their use of a digital medium. Los Anthropolocos invert color as a signifier of power, and explore the relationships of power between communities of color and the dominant (“white”) culture, “high art,” the Western Canon, "ethnic art," and post-modernity. All this as they contemplate the need for a bigger “net!”