Latino? Chicano? Guatemalan American? Queer Visual Artist? Alex Donis's Intersecting Positionalities and Representations of (US) Central America(ns).

In this essay, I examine how scholars and art critics have categorized Guatemalan American visual artist Alex Donis and how he has self-identified. I argue that the roles in which Donis has been cast underscore the ways US Central Americans are made invisible within discussions of Latina/o/x and LGBTQ+ art. I critically analyze two of his works, the silkscreen Rio, por no llorar (1988) and the painting Guatemala vs USA (Carlos (El Pescadito) Ruiz & Carlos Bocanegra) (2014), tracing a Guatemalan and Central American presence in Donis's visual art that is often overlooked in favor of a Chicanocentric framing in conversations about his work. While recognizing the influence that Chicana/o/x art and culture have had on Donis, I locate Donis and his visual art as a critical entry point into how US Central Americans have been rendered invisible within both dominant US and Latina/o/x imaginaries of Latinidad and imaginaries of queerness. Establishing a more complex understanding of Donis and his body of work, I discuss his oeuvre through a relational, intersectional, and transnational lens that allows for a multilayered understanding of his positionality within the frameworks of Latina/o/x ethnoracial identity formation, Chicana/o/x cultural production, and US Central American cultural and historical specificity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]