Janina Sofía López

Janina López works on contemporary Latinx art, with an emphasis on public art and art of the Chicano Movement. Her dissertation, “The Royal Chicano Air Force’s Comuniversidad: Public Art and Education in Northern California Since 1969,” considers silkscreen posters and public murals made by the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), an artist collective based in Sacramento, CA. With an emphasis on public education and intersections between university and community arts programs, her dissertation addresses the ways in which the RCAF collective’s art and pedagogy were co-created within a rapidly changing educational landscape of Northern California in the 1970s. This builds on Janina’s MA thesis about the 1977 Southside Park Mural, which situates the RCAF’s use of public space and civic architecture as a visual argument of Chicano presence. Janina curated Painting la Comuniversidad: Three Murals of the Royal Chicano Air Force, on view from February 12-May 1, 2026 at the Library Gallery at California State University, Sacramento. The exhibition was part of the InFormation regional celebration of the RCAF (Spring 2026), organized by La Raza Galería Posada. 

Janina is currently a Twenty-Four-Month Wyeth Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art. In AY26-27, she is completing dissertation research and will be in residence at The Center AY27-28. She has previously held fellowships with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the International Center for Art of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Pitt’s Humanities Center, and Monument Lab in Philadelphia.