The Ladder, 1993

Patssi Valdez began making interior domestic scenes in the late 1980s based on childhood memories, using dark, saturated colors to convey emotional intensity. In The Ladder, the spiraling carpet and vibrating shadows of the teetering ladder suggest subjective experience rather than objective appearance. The heavily draped curtains connote a stagelike psychological drama. Framing a storybook night sky, the window is a liminal space between interior and exterior that is ruptured by the titular ladder. From the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, Valdez was a member of the experimental Chicanx artists collective Asco, known for avant-garde performances and conceptual art that critiqued the representation of Chicanxs in mainstream art and culture. Valdez’s turn to painting was, in part, a reclamation of her prerogative to personal expression and a refusal of the demand to make art that spoke on behalf of Chicana experience or Latina women universally.