hyperallergic Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained the father and portrait muse of California-based Chicana painter Criselda Vasquez, who was inspired by her Mexican immigrant parents in her acclaimed painting “The New American Gothic.” The artist wrote that her father had been “racially profiled on his way home from work, and taken by immigration authorities,” on Tuesday, March 31, adding that he had been pulled over and arrested right outside of a neighbor’s home. Vasquez depicted her father and mother in her celebrated 2017 painting “The New American Gothic” (2017), a reimagining of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” (1930). In an earlier statement about the work, the artist had said that she sought to depict the “plight and the plight of many in my community.” Read more at hyperallergic.com. View all 10 comments