The Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine University | September 7–December 8, 2024
Design and Printing
All artwork is courtesy of the artists.
Art direction: Nicole Watson and Saundra Huntley
Design and Layout: Saundra Huntley
Artwork Photography: Nicole Neri
Printed by Bolger (Minneapolis, MN)
© 2024 St. Catherine University with generous support from the Minnesota Humanities Center Cultural Heritage Grant
An exhibition at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine University St. Paul, Minnesota
September 7–December 8, 2024
A note about language
Most of the text in this book, including the essays, the artist statements, and the bibliography, is published in English as it is the most common mode of communication by all participants of the exhibition.
To reflect the bilingual aspects of the exhibition, the curatorial statement and historical timeline are supplied in English and Spanish. Some artists have provided artwork titles in English along with Spanish translations. Biography information and artwork information has been written by the artists, and is presented in the original form as submitted by them for the object labels in the exhibition.
The first edition of this catalog consists of 250 copies. This catalog has been created to celebrate the artists in the exhibition, serve educational purposes, and document the ongoing and evolving history, heritage, and culture of Latina and Latinx people in Minnesota. We wish for printed and digital copies of this book to enter the collections of research libraries and national archives. This book is not to serve any commercial purposes. Any donations received upon the catalog’s release will be used to support a second printing.
Zamara Cuyún and William Gustavo Franklin Torres, Co-curators
Assembled by Zamara Cuyún and William Gustavo Franklin Torres, Co-curators
1978 Carmen GutiérrezBolger makes Minnesota her permanent home. Her family fled Cuba in 1962, looking for a new beginning in the United States.
1979
College of St. Catherine alumna and benefactor Catherine G. Murphy creates the opportunity to designate and activate this space as a gallery. To this day, the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine University continues to fulfill and enhance its mission as a forward-thinking space for the advancement of the arts, artists, and conversations about social justice.
Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc, the first Mexica dance group in Minnesota, is founded by a group of Chicana/o students of St. Cloud State University.
Writer Sandra Benítez makes Minnesota her home to produce bicultural stories [Latin American and Midwestern], leading to works of nonfiction for which she is awarded the National Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature.
Visitors to the Cinco de Mayo parade in West St. Paul witness the traditional Aztec dance performances of the communitybased group Kalpulli KetzalCoatlicue, directed by community organizer and activist Susana de León. The group is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
The exhibit Las Malhechas: Latina Art Show opens at Mira Gallery of El Instituto de Cultura y Educación at El Colegio in South Minneapolis. Mira Gallery was founded by Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera. Artists included: Savita Bettaglio, Constanza Carballo, Alexa Horochowski, Patricia Mendoza, and Deborah Ramos. Exhibition curated by Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera.
Dancer and community organizer Tania Galaviz launches the West Side Día de los Muertos and leads workshops of community ofrendas.
Audiences attend concerts by St. Paul’s West Side barrio singer, rapper, activist, and recording artist María Isa Pérez-Vega.
The artist collective Serpentina Arts is founded by Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera. From this point on, Serpentina Arts served as an instrumental facilitator of connections and opportunities for many Latinx artists seeking guidance and resources. Serpentina Arts received its status as a 501c3 non-profit organization in 2024.
Lorena Duarte produces the documentary LATINO ARTS | A COMMUNITY VISION for Twin Cities Public Television, highlighting 15 Minnesota Latino, Latina, and Latinx artists and their vision for the community.
Deborah Ramos launches El Festival de las Calaveras as a volunteer-organized event of Latinx music and arts. The Festival is celebrating its 11th edition in 2024.
Electric Machete Studios opens in West St. Paul as a flexible gallery space to serve the needs of artists in the community. This artist-run art and music production house was founded by Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra. The studios ceased to exist during the 2020 pandemic but programming continues to this day.
The Minneapolis Institute of Art acquires photographs by Selma Fernández Richter and Martha Driessen.
María Isa Pérez-Vega is elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives to represent District 65B, one of the largest Latino districts in the state.
The artist-run gallery Semillas opens its first exhibition out of an apartment in Minneapolis. Semillas was founded by Alondra Marisol Garza.
Collectively, these and other histories have paved the way to the moment we witness today — a historic survey of Minnesotabased Latina women and Latinx non-binary artists at the forefront of artistic expression and social transformation.
Assembled by Zamara Cuyún and William Gustavo Franklin Torres, Co-curadores
1978
1979
1994
Carmen GutiérrezBolger hace de Minnesota su hogar permanente. En 1962, su familia huye de Cuba en busca de un nuevo comienzo en los Estados Unidos.
La exalumna y benefactora del College de St. Catherine, Catherine G. Murphy, crea la oportunidad de designar y activar este espacio como galería. Hasta el día de hoy, la galería Catherine G. Murphy continúa desempeñando y mejorando su misión como un espacio vanguardista para el avance de las artes, les artistes y las conversaciones sobre justicia social.
Danza Mexica
Cuauhtemoc, el primer grupo mexica de danza en Minnesota, fue fundado por un grupo de estudiantes chicanas/ os de St. Cloud State University.
La escritora Sandra Benítez hace de Minnesota su hogar para producir historias biculturales [latinoamericanas y del Midwest], lo que da lugar a obras de no ficción por las que recibe el Premio Nacional de Herencia Hispana de Literatura.
Los visitantes del desfile del Cinco de Mayo en West St. Paul son testigos de las presentaciones de danza tradicional/folclórica azteca del grupo comunitario Kalpulli KetzalCoatlicue, dirigido por la organizadora y activista comunitaria, Susana de León. El grupo está celebrando su 30º aniversario este año.
La exhibición Las Malhechas: Latina Art Show se inaugura en la Galería Mira del Instituto de Cultura y Educación en El Colegio en el sur de Minneapolis. La Galería Mira fue fundada por Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera. Artistas participantes: Savita Bettaglio, Constanza Carballo, Alexa Horochowski, Patricia Mendoza y Deborah Ramos. Exhibición curada por Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera.
La bailarina y organizadora comunitaria Tania Galaviz lanza el Día de los Muertos en el West Side y dirige talleres de ofrendas comunitarias.
2013
El público asiste a los conciertos de la cantante, rapera, activista y artista discográfica del barrio West Side de St. Paul, María Isa Pérez-Vega.
El colectivo de artistas Serpentina Arts es fundado por Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera. Desde ese momento, Serpentina Arts sirve como facilitador instrumental de conexiones y oportunidades para muchos artistas latinx que buscan orientación y recursos. Serpentina Arts recibe su estatus como organización sin fines de lucro 501c3 en 2024.
Lorena Duarte produce el documental LATINO ARTS | A COMMUNITY VISION para Twin Cities Public Television, destacando a quince artistas latinos, latinas y latinx de Minnesota y su visión para la comunidad.
Deborah Ramos lan-
za El Festival de las Calaveras como un evento de música y arte latinx organizado por voluntarios. El Festival está celebrando su undécima edición en 2024.
Electric Machete
Studios abre en West St. Paul como un espacio de galería flexible para atender las necesidades de les artistes de la comunidad. Esta casa de producción de arte y música dirigida por artistas fue fundada por Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra. Los estudios dejaron de existir durante la pandemia de 2020, pero la programación continúa hasta el día de hoy.
El Instituto de Arte de Minneapolis adquiere fotografías de Selma Fernández Richter y Martha Driessen.
2022 María Isa Pérez-Vega es elegida para la Cámara de Representantes de Minnesota para representar al Distrito 65B, uno de los distritos latinos más grandes del estado.
La galería dirigida por artistes, Semillas, inaugura su primera exposición en un apartamento en Minneapolis. Semillas fue fundada por Alondra Marisol Garza.
Estas y otras múltiples historias han preparado el camino para el momento que estamos presenciando hoy, una muestra histórica de artistas — mujeres latinas y latinx no binari@s — de Minnesota a la vanguardia de la expresión artística y la transformación social.
Zamara Cuyún and William Gustavo Franklin Torres, Co-curators
A moment in a growing movement, an affirmation of a wide range of voices, a demand for inclusion; how can we view this exhibit? Re/claiming Space in Times of Change is not just a cultural correction.
As a multicultural and collective expression, Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change breaks the barriers of assumption. The exhibit is the first large comprehensive survey of self-identifying Latina women and Latinx non-binary Minnesotabased artists with ancestral roots in Latin America.
Embedded in each piece is the pride of being a Latina woman or a Latinx non-binary person, experiences often reduced to a social phenomenon by outsiders but armed here as an unequivocal historical, unifying and rich American condition. The ancestral roots in Latin America are then the pathway from a shared heritage, struggles and achievements, to the social and political present.
Moreover, Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change is compatible with other identities and historical moments, it speaks of universal values and aspirations common to other groups around the world. The ancestral and contemporary Latin diversity is vast and global.
At large, the exhibition is a celebratory moment, a love letter by the artists, an acknowledgement of their strength, achievements, artistry and creative force. It is a reflection of lived experiences, as well as an homage to the generations of women and non-binary people who have come before, not just the artists, but those who have raised, loved and guided this cohort along the way.
Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change situates these artists in the broader history of the arts in Minnesota, as an emerging and established group of creators and activists in the midst of dominant movements and histories. It spans from muralism, photography, ceramics, painting and design, to installation, video and performance, with a large number of artists exhibiting here for the first time.
Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change is co-curated by Zamara Cuyún and William Gustavo Franklin Torres; with Carmen GutiérrezBolger, Lynda Grafito, Marina Castillo, Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo, María Constanza Carballo, Selena Medellín, Deborah Ramos and María José Castillo Ortega as curatorial assistants and consultants.
Zamara Cuyún and William Gustavo Franklin Torres, Co-curadores
Un momento en una movida artística que crece, una afirmación de un gran número de voces, una demanda de inclusión; ¿cómo aproximarnos a esta exhibición? Reclamando Espacio en Tiempos de Cambio no es sólo una corrección cultural.
Como expresión multicultural colectiva, Latina y Latinx MN: Reclamando Espacio en Tiempos de Cambio rompe las barreras de la suposición. La exhibición es la primera muestra exhaustiva de artistas que se identifican como mujeres latinas y artistas latinx no binari@s con residencia en Minnesota y con raíces ancestrales en Latinoamérica.
Incorporado en cada pieza está el orgullo de ser una mujer latina o una persona no binaria, experiencias con frecuencia reducidas a un fenómeno social por aquellos que se encuentran fuera de estos grupos pero que están afirmadas aquí de manera inequívoca como una condición histórica, unificadora y ricamente americana. Las raíces ancestrales en Latinoamérica son por ende el camino desde una herencia compartida de esfuerzos y logros, al momento social y político del presente.
Asímismo, Latina y Latinx MN: Reclamando Espacio en Tiempos de Cambio es compatible con otras identidades y momentos históricos; la exhibición habla de valores compartidos y aspiraciones comunes con otros grupos alrededor del mundo. La diversidad latina ancestral y contemporánea es vasta y global.
En su totalidad, la exhibición marca un momento de celebración, es una carta de amor de parte de las artistas y les artistes, un reconocimiento de su fuerza, logros, arte y energía creativa. La exhibición es una reflexión sobre experiencias vividas, así como un homenaje a las generaciones de mujeres y personas no binarias que han venido antes, no sólo artistas y artistes, sino quienes han criado, amado y guiado a este grupo a lo largo del camino.
Latina y Latinx MN: Reclamando Espacio en Tiempos de Cambio sitúa a artistas y artistes en la amplia historia de las artes en Minnesota, como un grupo emergente y establecido, creador y activista, en medio de otros movimientos artísticos e historias dominantes. La exhibición abarca múltiples formas artísticas, desde el muralismo, fotografía, cerámica, pintura y diseño, hasta la instalación, video y performance, con un gran número de participantes exhibiendo aquí por primera vez.
Latina y Latinx MN: Reclamando Espacio en Tiempos de Cambio es co-curada por Zamara Cuyún y William Gustavo Franklin Torres; con Carmen Gutiérrez-Bolger, Lynda Grafito, Marina Castillo, Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo, María Constanza Carballo, Selena Medellín, Deborah Ramos y María José Castillo Ortega como asistentes y consultoras curatoriales.
I met William “Billy” Gustavo Franklin Torres by accident during the winter of 2022. Billy was at St. Kate’s on other business, but wandered into the Visual Arts Building and gallery looking for directions to his destination. He was immersed in a book project about Latin art in Minnesota, and we struck up a conversation about the important work of galleries and museums to elevate communities whose art had been underrepresented, and to do that work — to curate, organize and tell stories — in ways that challenge traditional power dynamics between artists and arts institutions. Billy was immediately drawn to the mission of the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, which is an active expression of St. Catherine University values: women-centered, genderinclusive, with a commitment to social justice teaching and the liberal arts. Our conversation evolved to the possibility of working together on a contemporary survey of Latina and Latinx artists in Minnesota, designed specifically with the gallery’s mission in mind. During our chance encounter, the seeds had been planted for Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change.
As plans for this exhibition were underway, I learned of the pressing need to document and celebrate artists from Latina and Latinx communities in Minnesota. Between 2000–21, the Latino population in Minnesota increased 141%, accounting for more than a quarter of the state’s total population growth during that period.1 Yet this demographic struggles for representation, recognition, and inclusion in the Twin Cities art scene and within the broader contemporary art histories of Minnesota and the United States. It has been 22 years since there was a Minnesotabased Latina, women-centered group exhibition similar to this project.2 Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change is the largest panoramic survey of Minnesota Latina and Latinx artists organized to date. Themes of identity, family, storytelling,
immigration, home, tradition, memory and language are woven throughout the exhibition, underpinning the voices and experiences of this diverse group of artists, honoring their contributions to our state’s shared past, present and future cultural heritage.
From its inception, this exhibition has been community-driven. Zamara Cuyún joined Billy as a co-curator early in the planning process, bringing with her deep experience as a local artist, muralist and educator. Like Billy, she is energized by collaboration, and as co-curators, they shared a commitment to keep this exhibition focused on the artists. There is evidence of these priorities in the show itself, including wall labels written by the artists, and exhibition text written in both English and Spanish. The organization of the show also points to Zamara and Billy’s desire to expand their engagement with and among the Latina and Latinx artist community. A group of artists in the exhibition served as the curatorial team to support the call for art and the selection of artworks in the show. I am grateful to Carmen Gutiérrez-Bolger, María Constanza Carballo, Marina Castillo, María José Castillo Ortega, Lynda Grafito, Selena Medellín, Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo and Deborah Ramos for their inspiring undertaking of this work.
There are many folks at St. Kate’s who helped this exhibition come to life, including Derek Clarke and Max Schanks, our campus painters, who transformed the gallery’s white walls to a warm, rich (and indeed) “Divine Wine” color. Bob Lee, one of our talented campus carpenters, supported installation for several of the artworks in this show; and Saundra Huntley, our graphic designer, was instrumental in creating the exhibition logo and signage, as well as the layout of this catalog. Thank you all for joyfully supporting this milestone exhibition with your expertise and creativity.
I am also greatly indebted to my colleague and dear friend, Lys Akerman-Frank, an artist in the exhibition as well as the Gallery Technician, who led installation of all of the artwork. Lys has also been a trusted consultant throughout the organization of the exhibition, and advised on curation, exhibition layout, technology and programming.
Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space is the vision of Zamara Cuyún and Billy Franklin, St. Catherine University’s 2024–25 Amy Marie Sears Memorial Visiting Curators in Residence. They organized the exhibition and all programming with care, curiosity and wisdom. Their curatorial practice is rooted in relationships, and their work reflects one of the main objectives of our teaching gallery: to create a community-based space of mutual learning, where all viewers can relate to the artworks, and one another, in some way. On behalf of St. Catherine University, we are honored and proud to host this exhibition here. Gracias por confiar en nosotras con esta exhibición.
Nicole M. Watson
Director, the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine University
1 Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, “Portrait of Hispanic/Latinx Minnesota –Demographic and Socioeconomic Characteristics,” October 2021, accessed October 6, 2024, State of Minnesota, https://mn.gov/mcla/assets/10_12_21% 20-%20Hispanic-Latinx%20in%20Minnesota%20Report_tcm1099-502857.pdf
2 In 2003, the exhibit Las Malhechas: Latina Art Show opened at Mira Gallery of El Instituto de Cultura y Educación at El Colegio in South Minneapolis. Mira Gallery was founded by Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera, who also curated the show, which included artists Savita Bettaglio, Constanza Carballo, Alexa Horochowski, Patricia Mendoza and Deborah Ramos. Zamara Cuyún and William Gustavo Franklin Torres, “Latina and Latinx MN: A Brief History,” September 7, 2024, accessed October 6, 2024, https://stkate.app.box.com/file/1651630019844?s =oa3rfud4k3kcq47caehpg0f6ylbjalti.
Laura Wertheim Joseph, PhD
On the occasion of the exhibition Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change, the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery is brimming with artworks across media. Paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, ceramics, sculptures, textiles, installations, sound art, video art, and digital collages feature wide-ranging materials, from salt to sequins. The forty-one artists whose creative, aesthetic labor is on display identify as women or nonbinary and of Latin American descent. The concept of Latinidad is a complicated one that many AfroLatinx and Indigenous peoples have increasingly contested for falsely conjuring a racial, cultural, and political monolith. But what this exhibition makes visible, as shared between these Latina and Latinx artists based in Mni Sota, is attunement to the elusive, shifting, paradoxical nature of identity itself. Through deep engagement with the work of Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta, art historian Jane Blocker describes this as identity’s “exilic qualities.” Blocker explains that through Mendieta’s experience of forced exile, displacement from her homeland, and separation from her family, she understood identity to be forged through loss. Blocker writes:
There is no essence, only the search for essence; there is no identity, only the name; there is no origin, only the cinder.1
Alas, for the sake of situating this project in relationship to sociopolitical geographies, I revert to names, names with which the artists in Latina and Latinx MN undoubtedly identify and disidentify to differing degrees.
The artists have ancestral roots across Latinidad, including in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Maya-Lenca Nation, Peru, and Venezuela. As the title indicates, at the time this show was organized, the artists were all based in Mni Sota, a place where Latine populations have grown significantly in the last 20 years. There are obvious risks in
making generalizations about what bringing these artists together means, as well as the related processes of separating the work of just a few for contemplation and leaving the rest to be considered by other means.
What strikes me about the show and installation, taken as a whole, are the number of artists included and the visual diversity of their work. As a writer who does not want to replicate the omissions this show seeks to resist, I feel a sense of overwhelm and inevitable failure. But I recognize this overwhelm to be the result of an abundance that is strategic and important. Because this effect can only be achieved through the collective contributions of each artist, this essay takes as its primary subject the significance of this abundance, in and of itself, rather than attempting to characterize and chart relationships between all the work in the show.
The exhibition’s abundance certainly supports the conveyance of Latina and Latinx as signifiers of multiplicity and divergence, but I also see it as related to what Jillian Hernandez theorizes as an “aesthetics of excess” spectacularly embodied by Black and Latina women and girls. Hernandez explains that while “there is nothing inherently excessive in the embodiments” she discusses, the attribute of excess has been used “to measure these styles against modernist European stylistic values, which were generated by influential white tastemakers, men who linked racial and gendered inferiority to so-called aesthetic indulgences.”2 As an example, she notes that the modernist artist and architect Le Corbusier hated glitter, “posing aesthetic purity against the fashionable patterns beloved of shopgirls.”3 Hernandez declares the dignity of this aesthetic and its disruptiveness to the normative gaze, as well as the power of subjects historically represented as unentitled to luxuries in dominant culture in claiming them.
The sheer number of artworks in the show and their intimate arrangements contribute to the sense that they defy both modernist and classical Western aesthetic norms. Against crimson walls, the artworks in Latina and Latinx MN hang close together, often stacked. Emulating the layered dynamics María José Castillo Ortega represents in their installation Worlds Within Worlds, the artworks communicate and reveal themselves — and the worlds they seek to envision — in different ways and on different timelines. While not every artwork in the exhibition explicitly reflects an aesthetic of excess, the dominance of patterns, ornamentations, and materials with feminine and domestic associations produces this combined visual effect.
While aesthetic excess is a framework with wide-ranging application, Hernandez is particularly focused on what she terms “sexual-aesthetic excess,” a concept she offers for “theorizing modes of dress and comportment that are often considered ‘too much’: ‘too sexy, too ethnic, too young, too cheap, too loud.’”4
In her print, Rarotonga Beauty, Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera tackles the tendency to sexualize and objectify Latina embodiment, refusing to reveal the body of a Mexican comic book character known for her brown skin, mysterious green eyes, “scanty” dress, and island habitation. Instead, Tavera presents Zonga’s disembodied face with a fierce and defiant expression framed by symbols representing genotypes that result in the observable trait, or phenotype, of green eyes.
Hernandez looks to Black and Latina women who engage in cultural production in the mode of aesthetic excess to challenge the policing of their bodies and sexualities. Alondra Garza’s This Barbie is The Statue of Libertad exemplifies this type of challenge. In a digital collage printed on a shiny (cheap) fabric, the artist — styled as a Latina Barbie and mimicking the gestures of Liberty —
holds up a vulva rendered in sequins rather than Liberty’s torch of enlightenment. This Barbie is The Statue of Libertad is a beacon to an alternative reality, where people with vulvas — especially people of color who are disproportionately affected by abortion bans and restrictions — experience sexual and reproductive self-determination and safety.
With an opulent display of colors, patterns, and textures, Mikha Dominguez also works in a mode of aesthetic excess to recast the Catholic altar as a structure for honoring rather than reviling queer and trans embodiment. Titled Santa María — patron saint of young women, purity, and rape victims — the artwork hails Santa Maria to ends that refuse the disciplining and rejection of, and related violence towards, queer and trans bodies and sexualities. A fragmented figure crowned with flowers, rather than thorns, is the “sacred” subject of the altar. In one of the vignettes, the figure substitutes Christ’s expression of pain — during his sacrificial crucifixion to atone for human sin — for one of unapologetic pleasure. A bejeweled cross at the base of the altar, strewn on the floor and suggestive of abandon, signals an ideology supplanted and another possible world.
Many featured artists channel embellishments and ornamentation to ends that reflect on the intersections between gender, race, and identity more broadly. An anchor in this kaleidoscopic experience is the work of Ivonne Paulina Jasso Yáñez, installed in the center of the west gallery. The artist renders machetes — typically used as weapons in combat or as agricultural tools to cut through undergrowth or crops — soft and decorative. Planted in a cross made of salt, Yáñez dispels them of their power to wound and instead calls on their symbolic significance in her Mexican culture. Mexican folklore suggests that sticking a machete in the ground alongside a cross made of salt has the
power to ward off rain and storms. While there is some humor and futility in her artistic statement — knowing that nature is a force humans can alter but not control — La Valiente/Machetes to Stop the Rain has a talismanic, protective effect in the exhibition. It invites others into the artist’s childhood reveries, where her mom, grandma, and the aunties who raised her loom large.
Adriana Gordillo’s Pedacitos de tiempo (Little Pieces of Time) is another protective presence that takes the form of a symbolic female figure in Rococo dress — a hyperfeminine, eighteenthcentury French European style that subsequent Enlightenment discourse deemed flamboyant, excessively ornamental, fake, and frivolous. Hernandez reanimates the term “rococo” to describe “a cultural mode of being, thought, and representation that centers women, femininity, nonnormative masculinity, dreams, and resistance.”5 Historically, centered on the white female subject Gordillo “trespasses” (to use Hernandez’s term) this privileged field to claim a proud inheritance of ornamentation — stitched together from lace and tulle, photos and poems, buttons and baby pins. This symbolic figure is a medium for connecting the artist with her mother and grandmother.
Nancy Ariza evokes the experience of many second-generation Latina immigrants who must bridge generations, as well as past and present, Spanish and English, expectations and realities, struggle and hope as a game of Serpientes y Escaleras, where snakes — here symbols of systemic racism — thwart real and
1 Jane Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity, Exile (Duke University Press, 1999), 34–35.
2 Jillian Hernandez, Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment (Duke University Press, 2020), 9.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid,12.
5 Ibid, 147.
mythic (American) dreams. Snakes are also Christian symbols of the sin of woman, whose susceptibility to temptation, pleasure, and excess is responsible for the downfall of humans from grace. In the face of paths that are often treacherous, many of the featured artists conjure their abuelas for strength and continuity.
In Zamara Cuyún’s Coyolxauhqui, the Mexica grandmother, moon goddess, and warrior who was dismembered by her brother, the Sun, uses the strength of her body to open a portal to the worlds that exist within worlds. She reminds us through her circular form that, even after destruction, the cycles of life continue. With the help of the stars, ornaments of excess in the sky, she helps guide those that pass through on their search for belonging through loss.
LAURA WERTHEIM JOSEPH is Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Sante Fe. Before moving back to New Mexico, where she was born, Laura served as Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (the M). At the M, she played a leadership role in fostering the revival of this important cultural organization based on a collaborative curatorial model and an emphasis on the artistic and cultural centrality of Mni Sota. Her curatorial work seeks to honor interconnectivity and interdependencies and is often collaborative. In addition to the many community-led curatorial projects she fostered and coordinated at the M, her curatorial projects include Hazel Belvo: For Love (with Dakota Hoska at the M), Harriet Bart: Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection (Weisman Art Museum), A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde (with a curatorial team at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum), Sandra Menefee Taylor: Heart/Land (Plains Art Museum). She received her PhD in art history from the University of Minnesota and her MA in arts administration from Saint Mary’s University.
María José Castillo Ortega
There is a sense of kinship when I meet a fellow Latinx artist in this Midwestern region of the United States of America where I currently reside. I can even relax and switch to speaking in Spanish — a language that, in my very biased judgment, provides a deeper, richer gamut of words to convey any thought under the sun. Conversations might turn quickly to what brought us here, the places we have called home, our family history, and what we long for or feel nostalgic about.
Being a Latinx artist and graphic designer in the context of Minnesota drives me to be “the only one in the room” regularly. I am reminded of this when I have to explain some contextual anecdote about my childhood to an unassuming crowd, ask for the meaning of a word I am unfamiliar with, or when my accent gets in the way of pronouncing a particular word in English — to have to correct any distorted preconceived notion about my culture or my heritage and make myself understood. Although most of these interactions are innocuous and lighthearted they might, at times, tick the spots of making me feel self-conscious and unsettled.
When navigating a less familiar context, code-switching — a documented linguistic and social phenomenon in which someone consciously or unconsciously adjusts their language, appearance, and behavior to fit in — can be a defense mechanism for some, helping us feel more in tune with our surroundings. We are social animals. We strive to fit in. Softening the tone of our voice, and occupying less physical space with our mannerisms to not look menacing, loud, or just “too much” might be behaviors that even when not asked for directly by the context we inhabit, seem to be strongly encouraged by the powers that be.
Any Latinx-identified person must certainly recount an experience of the sort, a conflict of identity that lies below the surface. As
artists, we often find in our craft an outlet to let those conflicts be, in all their rawness and contradiction.
The exhibition’s title, Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change (Recuperando Espacio en Tiempos de Cambio), could not be any more fitting — taking all the space generously offered by our host, St. Catherine University, and then some — a tally of 41 artists, an opening night that gathered around 500 attendees, a program including a hefty number of talks and workshops by participating artists, and a total runtime of three months.
In that re-claiming effort, the curators opened the show to both emerging and established artists — for some participants, this is their first exhibit. It also broadened the subject matter and placed no preference on the media showcased. The throughline on these 41 women and non-binary practitioners is a common heritage traced to Latin America. Every one of us attended this call, bringing a unique set of stories, memories, and worldviews that, thanks to the space granted by St. Catherine University, has found in the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery a playground to show that the term Latinx art spans far beyond any stylistic confines.
After walking through the exhibit piece by piece, I found myself in awe, not only by the richness of our craft but also by the vast array of symbolism in the artworks. I smiled while looking at Carmen Gutiérrez-Bolger’s Juego Para Hombres (Game For Men) — an enlarged and beautifully painted set of dominó — being reminded of afternoons spent at a farm near my hometown in Córdoba, Colombia, watching my uncles partake in loud dominó matches, beers in hand, bantering back and forth. Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera’s Rarotonga Beauty and her analysis of dominant and recessive genes brought my whole family tree to mind: a mix of Indigenous, some redheads, green eyes, brown skin, blonde hair. Nancy Ariza’s tongue-in-cheek Serpientes y Escaleras:
Second Generation Immigrant Experience showcases some relatable instances of what it means to traverse this path in the United States — experiences in which I have certainly found myself.
During the exhibit’s opening night, a group of Colombian artists decided to have an impromptu show-and-tell of each other’s artworks: I told them about my installation, Worlds Within Worlds, a visual poetry piece co-written between two people through a long-distance relationship, providing a glimpse to the ways we reveal ourselves to one another, creating bridges of shared personal languages. María Lindsay walked us through the process behind her piece Guerra y Paz, a self-portrait sprung from a time of change while getting used to a new chapter of life in the United States. Adriana Gordillo’s Pedacitos de Tiempo (Little Pieces of Time) is an intergenerational family portrait: a delicately crafted, bountifully adorned dress and headpiece that pay homage to the textile tradition within her family, and poetry that brings her and her family’s experience with voluntary and forced migrations to words etched on fabric. Lynda Grafito’s Sin Bordes collages the border wall between the United States and Mexico surrounded by different types of mushrooms at each side, a reminder that manmade barriers are imposed on territories that are part of bigger ecosystems, still keeping their underground communication regardless of political affairs.
Later in the night, I spoke to fellow Colombian artist Sandra Lucía Castañeda about her installation 0 o Autorretratos en un Trance (0, or Self-portraits in a Trance) — the result of an introspective, sometimes painful journey through her psyche that confronted her with parts of herself that, though daunting at first glance, proved revealing of her true nature. I also caught up with Mexican artist Ivonne Paulina Yasso Yáñez while discussing her work La Valiente / Machetes to Stop the Rain. The piece expands on the
Mexican tradition of sticking a machete in the ground, right in the center of a cross drawn with salt, to stop the rain. In some regions of Colombia, the tradition is to stick a broom on the ground, bristles pointing defiantly to the sky, in our backyards.
It was a rewarding experience to find an echo in these fellow artists about our shared experiences, what brings us together while still exalting our richness and diversity, and our quest to find our place and voice in this context we inhabit. I heard that echo resonate within all the voices represented in this exhibition from South, Central and North America and the Caribbean. Having taken it all in, the final result is a vibrant, soul-filling, deeply inspiring showcase of what Latina and Latinx artists in Minnesota contribute to this state’s art landscape and the place we rightfully occupy in its cultural heritage.
Reflecting upon the spirit of a gathering of such proportions of Latina and Latinx art-makers, the word confluence comes to mind. Though usually applied in geography to explain the occurrence of two or more watercourses joining to form a single stream, I see confluence as the chance meeting of life paths and minds. Forty-one artists have made their way through the earth’s geography to share a common ground today. A bird’seye view through time and space of such migrational movements and roads traveled would prove worthy of study on its own: a cartographic registry of each artist’s upbringing, life choices, challenges, memories, ancestral history, and identity.
I am forever grateful to Zamara Cuyún and William Gustavo Franklin Torres for including me in the foundational artists cohort alongside Carmen Gutiérrez-Bolger, Lynda Grafito, Marina Castillo, Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo, María Constanza Carballo, Selena Medellín, and Deborah Ramos. My infinite gratitude to Nicole
Watson (gallery director) and Lys Akerman-Frank (gallery technician and fellow participating artist) for their help throughout the process — from the conceptual phase of the exhibit to the installation, making each artwork shine in its own right.
I will cherish this expanding community of fellow Latinx voices, certain that our paths will cross soon enough. I will also strive to open the windows of dialogue and activate the much-needed support to make our presence in Minnesota bigger and brighter for years to come.
MARÍA JOSÉ CASTILLO ORTEGA is a Colombian visual artist and graphic designer living in Minneapolis, MN. Within their studio, Words Are Objects, they cultivate an art practice that feeds off their curiosity with language and communication, analyzing how our cultural background relates to the ways we engage with the written word.
2024–25
ZAMARA CUYÚN is a self-taught, “Gringindia” artist and educator of de-Indigenized Guatemalan Highland Maya ancestry — born and raised in Minneapolis. She works primarily in acrylics, using elements of Maya history, iconography, and worldview. Themes inspiring her work include histories of colonization and resistance, the persecution and genocide of Indigenous populations, decolonization, cultural resilience, social justice and the central role of women in these processes.
Since 2019, Cuyún has participated in a number of culturally focused collaborative public art projects. She currently teaches at Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and until 2024, served as a member of the Serpentina Arts leadership committee, an organization fostering the creativity and professional development of Minnesota Latinx visual artists. Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change is her curatorial debut.
WILLIAM “BILLY” GUSTAVO FRANKLIN TORRES (he/him/his) is a college professor, museum educator and an independent art curator. Franklin was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, and has been living in Minnesota for over two decades. He earned a Master of Liberal Studies with a minor in Art History from the University of Minnesota, and his thesis work focused on the international scope of Surrealism. Franklin has curated more than a dozen exhibits locally and served as panelist reviewing applications for grants and artist-in-residence programs. He teaches art history, criticism and theory at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and at Dunwoody College of Technology. Franklin is a part-time Educator at the Walker Art Center and a contributing writer for the local newspaper La Voz Latina.
ADRIANA GORDILLO
ALONDRA M. GARZA
ANA HORTENCIA FREEBERG
CARLOTA GAY
CARMEN GUTIÉRREZ-BOLGER
CECILIA CORNEJO SOTELO
CONSTANZA CARBALLO
DEBORAH RAMOS
FILIS R. DÍAZ
IVONNE PAULINA JASSO YÁÑEZ
JOCI SALGUERO
KANDACE CREEL FALCÓN
LYNDA GRAFITO
LYS AKERMAN-FRANK
MAGDALENA CORINNE KALUZA
MARIA CRISTINA (TINA) TAVERA
MARÍA JOSÉ CASTILLO ORTEGA
MARIA LINSDAY
MARINA CASTILLO
MARTHA GABRIELA DRIESSEN
MARY MIRANDA
MELODEE STRONG
MIKHA “MIKHAMIK” DOMINGUEZ
MÓNICA VEGA
NANCY ARIZA
NATALIA ROCAFUERTE
NAYELIE AVALOS
RAQUEL DIAZ GOUTIEREZ
RIO PÉREZ
ROSANNA RAMIREZ
SAM MENDEZ
SANDRA FELEMOVICIUS
SANDRA LUCÍA CASTAÑEDA
SARY KELLY SALAYA-MOLINA
SAVANNAH BUSTILLO
SAVITA CRISTINA BETTAGLIO
SELENA MEDELLÍN
SELMA FERNÁNDEZ RICHTER
SOFÍA PADILLA
VERÓNICA TORRES
ZAMARA CUYÚN
b. 1976, Colombia; lives in St. Paul, MN
b. 1956, Colombia; lives in Cali-Colombia
Pedacitos de tiempo (Little Pieces of Time), 2004–24
Dress: tulle, fabric, lace, serigraphy on fabric, assorted materials (buttons, toys, baby pins, trinkets, etc.), photographs.
Headpiece: cardboard, fabric, beads, handmade paper, paper plants, metal, ribbon tape, assorted materials (buttons, baby pins, trinkets, marbled paper, etc.).
Fan: fabric, paper, poem, assorted materials (beads, buttons, baby pins, etc.).
Large pins: wood, paint.
90” x 40” x 80”
Little Pieces of Time is a shared work that incorporates two generations of artists from the same family. The work revolves around the textile tradition and creativity inspired by the artists’ mother and grandmother. The poem that gives the work its name weaves the grandmother’s memory and the granddaughter’s life through spatial and temporal distance, summoning images of forced and voluntary migrations.
b. México; Mexican American, dual citizenship
This Barbie is The Statue of Libertad, 2023 Digital collage of sequin sculpture, the artist, the sky, and the Statue of Liberty, printed on fabric 84” x 54”
I replaced the Statue of Liberty with a woman (myself) dressed like Barbie and holding up a vulva that I made of sequins. The Statue of Liberty represents freedom, and with this piece, I am using it as iconography for the wished freedom to liberate our vulvas and uteri from oppression, the freedom to have a choice over our bodies, the freedom to not be criminalized, and the freedom to speak up.
b. 2000, Minneapolis, MN; Mexican American
Yectic Rollkur, 2024
Oil paint and truck decal on fabric 36” x 36”
The young girl sits on top of an Azteca horse, and learns that she must present herself and the horse (her extension) in a manner suitable for the approval of the audience. Rollkur is a controversial training technique imported from Europe, involving a painful and forced over-flexion of the horse’s neck to create an artificial silhouette. The inclusion of the Rollkur technique shows a violent attempt to restrain pride in culture and tradition in order to assimilate in a society established and occupied by White Americans. While the child is at the center of the painting, the eagle positioned above her sustains ideal “American” symbolism which is now often used in far-right propaganda, convoluting national pride for others.
lives in Rochester, MN; American/Argentinian
Sangre Latina from the series “Women Through Their Eyes,” 2022–24
Acrylic over silk fabric 72” x 54”
My ultimate aspiration is to show the richness of women’s inner lives through the expression of their eyes. I portray women with large eyes to evoke their emotions and help understand them. My body of work uses these portraits to illustrate a diversity of cultures and backgrounds, displaying women from many backgrounds and walks of life. Women’s strength, resilience, passion, sadness, vulnerability, happiness… Those are the themes of my artistic expression. Showing women in all their colors is the purpose of my art.
b. 1956, Havana, Cuba; lives in Minneapolis, MN
Juego para hombres (Game for men), 2008 and 2024
Set of double-six dominoes, oil on wood. Wooden ammunition box that was part of a balsa that washed up on shore in Boca Raton, FL, and found by my brother in the 70s, and sand collected on the beach of Tarará, Cuba, by my sister in 2000. 60” x 8” x 72”
I am a Spanglish artist. My work draws on my experiences growing up in southern Florida as a Cuban refugee. Through a range of mediums, I merge my personal history with Cuban iconography to fashion narratives that interpret the spiritual, mythical, and cultural dimensions of my two identities. I look to portray a sense of displacement and disorientation, the ubiquitous condition of being from somewhere else, the immigrant experience.
Born and raised in Chile; lives in Northfield, MN, the occupied ancestral land of the Wahpekute Band of the Dakota Nation
Red Wing Community Quilt / Manta Comunitaria de Red Wing, 2022–24 Community-engaged art, social practice, fiber arts 96” x 180”
The Red Wing Community Quilt embraces the cherished tradition of quiltmaking to bring a community together across culture, language, and time. The piece is comprised of embroidered phrases based on audio testimonials recorded in 2022 by Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo through her multi-platform project, The Wandering House (thewanderinghouse.com). Through this project, Cornejo Sotelo invited residents in Red Wing, Minnesota, to reflect and record their thoughts on the significance of home. For the quilt, the artist selected audio snippets in which
community members responded to the prompt, “I Know I’m Home When…” A year later, in 2023, in close partnership with Red Wing Arts, Cornejo Sotelo recruited nearly 60 local volunteers, who during summer and fall, gave a visual interpretation to the audio testimonials. Unlike a traditional quilt, the piece features embroidered fragments dissimilar in style and levels of proficiency, calling attention to the heterogeneity of the community that produced it. In doing so, the Red Wing Community Quilt is a testament to the power of communal creativity and collaboration.
Lead artist and project manager: Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo.
Textile artists and quilters: Linda Bang, Lynda Kern, Maureen Nelson, Lorrie Sonnek, and Linda Thielbar.
b. Argentina; raised, lives in Minnesota
Echoes of Heritage bridges the ancestral and the contemporary, inviting viewers into a visual dialogue between past and present. This piece juxtaposes a traditional figure adorned in a golden pre-Columbian headdress, symbolizing the rich cultural heritage, with a modern, vividly colored mask
that represents the dynamic and evolving identity of Latina artists in Minnesota today. Positioned against a backdrop of dramatic color splashes, the artwork celebrates the enduring influence of heritage while embracing the transformative power of artistic expression in times of change.
b. El Paso, TX; Chicana
Santa Fe y Calleros, 2024
Digital, mixed media installation
Photos
Portrait: Grandmother, María V. Chávez, 1958 (1927–2015). 18” x 18”
Parking Lot: Site of maternal grandparent’s first home in El Paso, Texas at the corner of Santa Fe Street and Calleros Court. 18” x 24”
Scenic view of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, connected by the Rio Grande, from Trans-Mountain Highway, Franklin Mountains: My grandmother’s body rests near the foot of Mount Cristo Rey, overlooking the tri-state desert. 24” x 30”
Border: The U.S.-Mexico border wall and canal from Borderland Expressway, El Paso, Texas. 20” x 28”
In the late 1940s, my maternal grandparents established their home in an apartment building in the historic “Chihuahuita” barrio of downtown El Paso, Texas. This brick building, constructed sometime after 1881 stood at the corner of Santa Fe Street and Calleros Court — now replaced by a parking lot. The location, just a block away from the intersections of the Paso del Norte International Bridge, the Rio Grande River, and the Santa Fe Railway, sits at the crossroads of significant cultural and geographical pathways.
This series of prints is a narrative woven from memories of my grandmother, capturing the spirit of her first home in El Paso. Her journey in this place—within our family’s ancestral lineage across New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Texas—marked a pivotal point. It was here that she found the courage to break free from cycles of domestic violence, creating a legacy of resilience that continues to inspire.
b. 1994, Caracas, Venezuela; lives in Minneapolis, MN
Las memorias de Phillips, 2023
Gouache, Pigma markers
7” x 5”
Corazón Caribeño, 2024
Gouache, Pigma markers
10” x 10”
La romanina, 2023
Gouache, Pigma markers
7” x 11”
Recuerdo vivo, 2024
Gouache, Pigma markers
12” x 12”
Lazy Day, 2023
Gouache, Pigma markers
9” x 6”
El nido, 2024
Gouache, Pigma markers
8” x 10”
The everydayness of communal spaces is what inspired me to create these drawings, enveloped in home and everyday life, extremely detailed as here every object takes center stage. The vivid memory in personal belongings, inspired by my grandmother and her essence, in her classic attire from previous years and the immortality of her memory in physical objects. Intrusive thoughts nest sometimes, but reality is like a refuge for the aching soul.
b. 1991, Mexico City; lives in Minneapolis, MN
La Valiente / Machetes to Stop the Rain, 2023
Marbled fabric, embroidery, salt variable
The machetes, used for centuries as indispensable tools for humanity, represent bravery and strength. However, they also harbor a rich tapestry of superstitions. Among them is the belief that a machete, strategically placed on the ground alongside a cross made of salt, possesses the power to ward off rain. An ancestral practice born from a combination of tradition and folklore.
b. Minnesota; Mexican Guatemalan American
Queridas estrellas fugaces, ¿de lo mío se sabe algo?, 2023
33.5” x 24”
As a Latinx artist, my identity is inherently woven into my art in ways it cannot be detached. I began this piece as my first attempt at a self-portrait soon after my 22nd birthday, only to abandon it as I went through one of the lowest points in my life. After finishing a grueling academic year where I had lost hope for myself and my dreams, I set out to accomplish what I had started. The completion of this piece became an act of healing as I began to understand myself as a Latinx, artist, and student; it is the beginning of newfound hope.
b. 1981, Kansas; lives in Erhard, MN; Mexican descent
When two became three, 2023–24
Acrylic, spray and latex paint, fabric, thread, yarn, plushie on dyed single-weave canvas quilted with batting and raw canvas 43” x 62”
This painting is part of a larger series called Beds of Memories, focusing on my childhood bedrooms. When two became three is the first of the series and is made to roughly the dimensions of a crib-sized blanket. Intrigued by interior spaces and how we make sense of home, I am on a mission through these mixed-media quilted paintings to reconnect with the younger version of myself and gain insights into my current sensibilities through the bed as a connecting theme.
lives in Minneapolis, MN; Colombian
Sin Bordes, 2023
Linocut and collage
80” x 100”
My work is full of symbols: phrases, animals, plants, and elements that speak of the territory of Minnesota and Latin America, its traditions, cultures, transformations, and conflicts. My pieces represent the relationships that can be established between humans and other living beings in border territories, how people are affected by the border; in how they find different ways to overcome it to seek a better future or their own natural intuition to survive, and in how borders affect our relationship with nature, food, and traditions.
b. São Paulo, Brasil; Brazilian American
Hineni, 2024
Mix media (leather, foam, wire, fabric, paper mache, cotton)
48” x 10” x 48”
The name Hineni means “Here I am.” Hineni is a collection of the experiences and encounters of all these years living in the United States, of all the masks I have fashioned and worn to live, survive, and thrive as a first-generation immigrant from Brazil. I was born and raised in Brazil and moved to the United States at 21. Each leaf stands for each month I have been here. When I arrived, no one was waiting to greet me, and after 29 years, Here I am — Hineni.
b. 1991, Minnesota; lives in Minneapolis, MN; Guatemalan, Honduran and Mexican descent
Selected works from the series
T’zunun: Corazón de la Tierra, 2024 Pottery
Right: Beloved Earth, 2” x 12.5”
Bottom left: Gagxanul, 1.5” x 12”
Bottom right:
20 Nahuales, 1.5” x 12”
T’zunun means “hummingbird” in Maya K’iche’. As social infrastructure crumbles around us, as we witness the pain of genocide and climate crises, I’ve found solace in our dear home planet Earth. Every time I see a pollinator, I celebrate. Guided by a love of nature learned from my Minnesotan mother and Mayan father, this series seeks to honor our aching world.
b. Minneapolis, MN; Mexican American
Rarotonga Beauty, 2016
Mixed media
30” x 24”
Rarotonga, a character in a popular Mexican comic book, is a brown-skinned hypersexualized woman with mysterious green eyes. In the narrative she is repeatedly objectified, displayed scantily dressed in a jungle on an island. This print presents an empowered Rarotonga with an unflinching pose that challenges the viewer. She is paired with genetic charts that delineate the genes necessary to result in her brilliant green eye color. The charts express identity through our physical characteristics referencing genotypes and phenotypes of our inherited genetic identity. The graphics highlight the intersectionality of the biological and the socially constructed correlations between race, ethnicity, and physical appearance.
b. 1988, Córdoba, Colombia; lives in Minneapolis, MN
Worlds Within Worlds, 2024
Inkjet print, collage, spray paint, video projection 49” x 61”
Worlds Within Worlds is a visual collage based on communications shared between two writers for the span of four years. Letters, social media texts, essays, photos, and voice recordings, all produced in different contexts and with different purposes at the time. The recontextualization of said communications into pieces of poetry provides a glimpse to the ways we reveal ourselves to one another, creating bridges that become shared and deeply personal languages.
b. 1966, Colombia; lives in Rogers, MN
Guerra y paz, 2022
Mixed media
36” x 24”
In this work, I wish to reflect the tireless fight of people to try to maintain a balance in life away from their homeland and roots; an endless fight of accomplishments and failures of light and darkness, and where trying to survive and adapt turns into an emotional path of war and peace. I simply try to reflect the strength and internal fight of immigrants after leaving everything behind and starting a new life.
b. Tijuana; raised in California, Twin Cities-based artist
Cruzando Pal Otro Lado, 2022–24
Mixed media
36” x 48”
Being from a border town and traveling back and forth from the U.S. to Tijuana as a child, the “Caution Families Crossing” signs were very pronounced. When Obama created the cages, my heart broke and I couldn’t help but think of our families destined for cages as they were seeking asylum on what was once their own native land. The sarape represents my people, my culture, the bond that keeps us together through it all and regardless of the distance between loved ones. Many who are here can no longer see their families in person. It’s a reminder of where we come from.
lives in Minneapolis, MN; Mexican
NOSOTRAS, 2024
Archival pigment prints 100” x 24” (11” x 16” each)
“Nosotras” is a “feminine” pronoun in the Spanish language that refers to the feminine form for “us”. NOSOTRAS, composed by a collection of five photographs, alludes to a column in its installation; a symbol of support, strength, and stability. In my work, I walk in a manner that might seem aimless. No plan, no agenda. I am guided by light, distracted by backgrounds, stopped by happenstance, and often intercepted by women. There is an instant connection, difficult to explain but easy to perceive. A gaze, a smile, an invitation. Sometimes it’s a couple of seconds, sometimes a full conversation, I may never learn their name, I might be welcomed in for coffee. NOSOTRAS suggests complicity, solidarity, and understanding amongst women.
b. Minneapolis, MN; Jamaican Mexican
The locksmith (desde que te fuiste), 2023 Mixed media on paper 40” x 32”
The locksmith (desde que te fuiste) is a visual piece showcasing solitude through bursts of color. I utilized traditional Mexican folk art style papel picado to upcycle old zines I’d worked on with youth when I was a preschool art teacher with the help of oil pastels, markers, and acrylic. This piece was inspired by moments of justice, loss, and growth. With every experience, good or bad, we learn to bring more wonder and hope into our lives.
b. 1973, Minnesota; lives in Minneapolis, MN; Peruvian descent
Vuelvo Enseguida (I’ll be right back), 2022 Charcoal, laundry basket
49” x 30” x 30”
This piece is about the time my mother recalls when her mother (my grandmother) left her and never came back. When my mother was around the age of 3–5, my grandmother left my mom on the front stoop of their home and said that she would be right back: “I am going to the laundry.” My mother thought it was strange because she didn’t have her laundry basket. It wasn’t until my mother was 18 that she was reunited with her mother and found out she was alive.
b. 1987, Venezuelan; Minneapolis resident since 2014
Santa María, 2024
Mixed media assemblage
60” x 36”
Through their art and in this piece, Dominguez addresses the impact of conversion therapy and family pressure on mental health, emphasizing the diversity and emotional richness of the LGBTQIA+ community. Their work advocates for visibility, authenticity, and the belief that art has intrinsic value.
b. 1981, in CDMX with Michoacan roots; lives in St. Paul, MN
Roxana, estrella que resplandece, 2024
Mixed media
81” x 24” x 46”
Roxana Linares: daughter, sister, friend, sidekick, Peruvian, lover of her roots, art and culture, a community leader, and the executive director of Centro Tyrone Guzmán for over 14 years. She departed this earthly world on August 26, 2023, leaving behind a great legacy in the Latino community of Minnesota.
We celebrate her life after life, creating a collage of traditional Mexican Day of the Dead nichos. The four elements are represented: fire, earth, air, and water. We honor her life and the lives of our female ancestors, grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends who have left this earthly world to continue in the spiritual world. According to our beliefs, we await their visit on November 1 and 2 to celebrate their lives on Day of the Dead.
b. Los Angeles, CA; Mexican American
Serpientes y Escaleras: Second Generation Immigrant Experience, 2024
Mixed media
13.5” x 20”
This piece is a reimagining of the Latin American board game serpientes y escaleras (snakes and ladders) using iconography and text to represent both the hopes and challenges faced by second-generation Mexican immigrants. Some children of immigrants may internalize a belief in working twice as hard to succeed due to familial expectations, which are often influenced by aspirations associated with the American Dream. This commitment can persist despite facing obstacles such as systemic inequality and racism. In the reimagined game, each space represents a step forward or a setback on the journey towards upward mobility.
b. 1993, Mexico; lives in Minnesota
Four Immigrant Women’s Dreams, 2021
Video art sculpture
45” x 120”
Four Immigrant Women’s Dreams was created based on the calls and emails I got through the Dream Hotline, a phone message center I held open for one year, encouraging Latinx immigrants to call and share their dreams from their sleep the night before. The Hotline received callers from Michigan and Texas, which participants learned about through posters, ads and word of mouth advertisement (mostly in Spanish). Using a Jungian Dream survey, each caller shared their dreams through a dream survey structure I created. The animation in the video uses voicemails left from the Dream Hotline as vocal guides into a surreal, pop and cultural experimental short.
b. 1998, southern Minnesota; lives in Minneapolis; Mexican descent
Faced, 2024
As a Mexican woman navigating the complexities of identity, I’ve embraced the richness of my culture while challenging societal norms surrounding Queer acceptance. Despite the prevailing stigma, I’ve found resilience in celebrating my authentic self and fostering dialogue within my community. However, it has often been a lonely and difficult journey, feeling like I am living two lives half the time. My art reflects this struggle and the duality of my existence, capturing the tension between cultural heritage and personal truth. Through my work, I aim to advocate for inclusivity and empower others to embrace their intersectional identities.
b. 1968, Panama City, Panama; Southern European and Indigenous American descent
Misi-ziibi Queen, 2024
Acrylic paint, rainwater, plastic nets and bottles, dried paint, glass, and snow melt 48” x 36”
Misi-ziibi Queen hints at a curving aerial landscape created with acrylic paint, discarded packaging, and other materials representing massive water arteries as connectors. The Mississippi River is considered sacred by Indigenous cultures, as it provides life and wisdom and has served as a means of transportation and communication for early settlers. However, North America’s second-largest drainage system to 31 states plus two Canadian provinces has been named the most endangered river in the USA.
b. Venezuela; raised in Hallock, MN
Pasajero Perpetuo / Perpetual Passenger, 2023 Collage and poem
15” x 12” each
These are my two Venezuelan passport photos, before and after ten years of separation from home and family. Living in a diaspora split me up into little fragments over the years: fragments of past and current selves, lost and present homes, memories that may or may not be real. I imagine my fragments finding themselves in water and sky, which are simultaneously a measure of distance and closeness between here and home.
Mexican and Finnish descent
The Onion Fields, 2024
Acrylic on canvas
24” x 36”
Watching my immigrant tías and tíos work tirelessly in the onion fields just to make a living was an eye-opener for me. They worked from sunrise to sunset in the summer heat. They are such an integral part of society, yet are hardly recognized. This piece is a tribute to their role in paving the way for my generation to have a better quality of life.
b. 2001, San Francisco, CA; Peruvian American
Muérdame, 2023
Inkjet prints of Van Dyke Brown images 36” x 24” each
The series of prints titled Muérdame (Bite me) were created with, and in response to, a vandalized photo-positive of the artist’s family member. Van Dyke Brown photochemistry is used to print the image in monochrome, heightening the depiction of a red X slashed across the face of a Latine child, while also making direct use of the destroyed photopositive itself. A mirror is placed in the center print, inviting viewers and the vandalizer to place themselves in the subject’s position. The prints displayed are enlarged inkjet images of the original series, intended to highlight the weight of the destruction of art.
b. Mexico City; lives in Minneapolis, MN; Mexican American
Crescendo, 2023
Acrylic on canvas
45” x 66”
Minneapolis has been my home for the past 32 years and I love bringing that energy into homes and business spaces in the Twin Cities and the world. My background as a Mexican immigrant has always been a part of my formation. I bring my culture and tradition into my work; the complexity and all the layers that come with merging the two cultures informs my artwork. My process of starting with mark-making on the canvas creates a visceral reaction where I don’t use my intellect. I use my gut and here is where my dance starts with the painting, as an explosion of emotion and passion, with an unplanned deliberation of strokes. I always keep intact my Jewish, Mexican and American roots that come through my artwork.
b. Bogotá, Colombia; lives in Minneapolis, MN
0 o autorretratos en un trance
(0, or self-portraits in a trance), 2024 Digital art, installation with an adaptation of Gypsy music
80” x 1” x 70”
0, or self-portraits in a trance is a compositional and provocative space for individual perception. As part of the author’s therapeutic-expressivecreative process, the installation invites the viewer to participate sensorially in the cathartic effect resulting from her search for the dissolution of the self.
b. Minneapolis, MN; Mexican American
Amor Prohibido, 2022
Photography
36” x 24”
These images transcend the time and space they were taken in because they have been used as reference points for the couple to look back on when they are in environments where they cannot express their sexualities freely. Through this series, I seek to create spaces and conversations where el amor no longer has to be prohibido.
b. 1995, U.S.; Colombian American
Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’, Book Four, Chapter Six, Part One, “Of the Motives for Establishing New Colonies”, Used, 2022
Screen print on bleached and folded paper napkin, edition of 24 12” x 9”
The History of Work, 2024
VE edition of 15 Sliced Popular Mechanics magazines (1960s–70s), fender washers, screws, synthetic vellum, screen printing 13” x 1.25” x 1”
[kahr-neh-ah-saa-dah], 2023
Hand-cut Rubylith, screen print, edition of 4
Three panels, 22” x 30” each
My work explores authenticity and identity as embodied practices, viscerally constructed through tastes and sounds. Memories, digested and reconstituted. By bringing together syllables, grease stains, and marginalia, I want to ground the expansive and challenging histories of language and labor. How can attention to embodied practices facilitate an understanding of these larger abstract systems? Can they inspire stronger empathy to the bodies encircled in said histories?
b. Minneapolis, MN; Salvadoran American
Divine Union, 2024
Acrylic on canvas
36” x 42”
Divine Union is a conversation about enlightenment and embodiment in all that I am as a multidimensional being. It is simultaneously a reflection on how I have evolved since creating and exhibiting one of my first selfportraits, titled Silent Flight (which is about battling internal and external demons). The work navigates the process of reclaiming my birthright gifts in the ever present and constant change.
b. 1997, Minnesota; lives in Mankato, MN; Mexican descent
Floreciendo Juntas, 2024
Ceramic and mixed media
18” x 15” x 15”
Floreciendo Juntas is a ceramic and mixed media sculpture that embodies the collective struggle and beauty of Latina women in society. Each individual flower represents a unique story, a personal journey marked by resilience, strength, and the pursuit of justice.
Together, these flowers form a larger, more powerful structure, symbolizing how our unity and mutual support create something greater and more beautiful than the sum of our parts. This piece celebrates the idea that, despite the challenges we face, our solidarity and communal strength allow us to bloom and thrive.
In Floreciendo Juntas, the intricate details and vibrant colors of each flower reflect the rich cultural heritage and diversity within the Latina/Latinx community. The fabric textures embedded in the ceramic surfaces add a tactile dimension, inviting viewers to connect with the piece on a sensory level.
This sculpture is a tribute to the power of collective action and the enduring spirit of Latina women. It stands as a reminder that our strength lies in our unity and our beauty in our diversity. When we support each other, we create a more just and equitable world for all.
b. 1974, Oaxaca, Mexico; lives in Minneapolis, MN
Right: Sunday morning, November 2020
Bottom left: Tornado warning, August 2020
Bottom right: Tablet, November 2023
Archival pigment prints 26” x 32” each
The images presented are part of an ongoing project that I have been working on since 2017. This body of work reflects my experiences as a mother, exploring the isolating nature of parenting and the challenges of raising a child without a support network. My intention is to offer a candid examination of the emotional, intellectual and physical labor and to create a space for viewers to confront and contemplate the multifaceted dimensions of maternal experiences in contemporary society.
b. 1984, Mexico City; based in Minneapolis, MN
Belong / Pertenecer, 2024
Shadow Puppets / Sand Drawings video
Some of us came with nothing but luggage of fear and longing. Some of us were running away from something and/or looking desperately for something else, sometimes home won’t let you stay. How do we rebuild our identity in order to survive in a new country? Belong is made of two words: be and long.
b. 1985, Texas; lives in Minneapolis, MN; Cuban and Mexican descent
Left:
Lover Gaze Deep …, 2023
Mid-fire porcelain, underglaze, glaze
9.25” x 7” x 7”
“Lover gaze deep. My body a reckoning of centuries of pain, passion, and submission. I feel it in my teeth, in my bones — the want and need for poetry, sex, chaos — all the fanciful whims of those that would devour. My tender side, the admirer of small delights: the smell of sunshine in your hair; fingertips pressing deep in the wet of earth and grass. For this I swoon. The baby’s fever breaks and I’m quilted into a story of fragmented time. Is there room for regret? For anger? From here you see me from above, in perpetual wilt and bloom?”
Middle:
Automatic Beating, 2024
Stoneware, wax resist text, glaze
6.75” x 5.75” x 5.75”
“What of this now? The automatic beating of my heart isn’t a reflection of my feelings, of what I can bear. I sway side to side, unsure which lurks beneath the …”
Right:
Sensory Pleasure Activation, 2023
Stoneware, glaze, wood kiln firing
6.25” x 4” x 4”
“Sensory pleasure activation. Electric prod switchy — chalk taste banana. Lick the pink salt table setting. Snapshot aesthetic with integrity. Lay your head down.”
b. Minneapolis, MN; Guatemalan American
Coyolxauhqui, 2022
Acrylic on canvas, wood
34” x 44”
This interpretation of the sacred Mexica grandmother, Coyolxauhqui, was created, upon request, to serve as a visual focal point for meditation and healing. Multiple parallel narratives for Coyolxauhqui exist throughout Mesoamerica, including Ixik in the Maya highlands of Iximulew (Guatemala). She is a
celebration of our strength and resilience as we move through each new cycle, finding ourselves confronted with new challenges, torn apart physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. She guides us, as those pieces are reassembled –an act of rebirth – bringing us back into wholeness as we heal and find ourselves renewed.
Latina and Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change is presented by the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine University, September 7–December 8, 2024. The exhibition is sponsored by the St. Catherine University Mission Chairs and presented in partnership with the St. Catherine University Amy Marie Sears Memorial Visiting Artist and Curator Series.
The exhibition and this catalog is funded in part by the Minnesota Humanities Center (MHC) with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund that was created with the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.
For future learning about Latina and Latinx artists in Minnesota and beyond 2024
Aloi, Jacob. “‘Re/Claiming’ a space for Latina and Latinx art.” Minnesota Public Radio. September 25, 2024. https://www.mprnews.org/story/ 2024/09/25/reclaiming-a-space-for-latina-and-latinx-art.
Rustad, Leonor Villasuso. “Artistas latinas reivindican su espacio en MN.” La Voz Latina. August 31, 2024. https://www.stpaulpublishing.com/ artistas-latinas-reivindican-su-espacio-en-mn/.
The Art of Luis Fitch, UNO Branding. Minneapolis: UNO Branding in association with Luis Fitch, 2024.
Arana, Marie. LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024.
Cippole, Alex V. “‘A phenomenon’: A new book features contemporary Latin artists in Minnesota.” Minnesota Public Radio. April 19, 2023. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/04/19/a-phenomenon-a-newbook-features-contemporary-latin-artists-in-minnesota.
City of Northfield, “Latin Art in Minnesota: Conversations and What’s Next | Northfield Public Library,” YouTube video, 107:02, September 21, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8WPGzgUuGY.
Eler, Alicia. “Artists of Latino descent on the rise in the Twin Cities.” Minnesota Star Tribune. September 15, 2023. https://www.startribune. com/artists-of-latino-descent-on-the-rise-in-the-twin-cities/600304916.
Franklin, William G., ed. Latin Art in Minnesota: Conversations and What’s Next. Minneapolis: Afton Press, 2023. (Amended digital copy available for browsing via St. Catherine University Library LibSearch: https://libsearch.stkate.edu/discovery/fulldisplay?context=L&vid=01 CLIC_SCU: STKATE&docid=alma991005212874303689.)
Phaidon Editors. Latin American Artists: From 1785 to Now. London/New York: Phaidon Press, 2023.
Kolnick, Jeff. “Minnesotanos: Latino Journeys in Minnesota.” MNOPEDIA. Last modified October 27, 2022. https://www.mnopedia.org/minnesotanos-latino-journeys-minnesota.
Padilla, Dougie and Xavier Tavera, curators. Exhibition: Mestizaje: IntermixRemix. Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN. March 19–June 12, 2022. https://mmaa.org/mestizaje-intermix-remix/.
Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs. “Portrait of Hispanic/Latinx Minnesota — Demographic and Socioeconomic Characteristics.” State of Minnesota. October 2021. https://mn.gov/mcla/assets/10_12_21%20-%20HispanicLatinx%20in%20Minnesota%20Report_tcm1099-502857.pdf.
Rivas, Pilar Tompkins. “You Belong Here: Place, People and Purpose in Latinx Photography.” Aperture. Winter 2021. https://aperture.org/exhibitions/ latinx/.
Dávila, Arlene. Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.
Ferrer, Elizabeth. Latinx Photography in The United States: A Visual History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021.
Melo, Frederick. “In ‘Caravan,’ 31 Twin Cities artists reflect on immigrant journeys.” St. Paul Pioneer Press. November 29, 2019. https://www.twincities.com/2019/11/29/in-caravan-31-twin-citiesartists-reflect-on-immigrant-journeys/.
Carrs, Peter, director. So Close to America: Farmworker Realities in the Days of Trump and Beyond. Peter Carrs via Vimeo, 2018. 23:44. https://vimeo.com/299093446.
“Latino, Art Migration opening weaves the personal and political.” The Mac Weekly. February 10, 2017. https://themacweekly.com/71970/arts/ latino-art-migration-opening-weaves-the-personal-and-political/.
Fajardo-Hill, Cecilia and Andrea Giunta, curators. Exhibition and digital archive: Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1969-1985. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. September 15–December 31, 2017. https://hammer.ucla.edu/radical-women.
Ramos, E., Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art. Washington, DC: Smithsonian American Art Museum/D Giles Ltd., 2013.
Blackstone, Lisa, director. Latino Arts: A Community Vision. Minnesota Humanities Center, Minnesota Chicano Latino Affairs Council and TPT-Twin Cities PBS, 2010. https://www.tpt.org/latino-arts-a-community-vision/.
Nodín Valdés, Dionicio. Barrios Norteños: St. Paul and Midwestern Mexican Communities in the Twentieth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
Serpentina Arts: serpentinaarts.com Prifmata: prifmata-collective.com Grupo Soap del Corazón: gruposoapdelcorazon.com
Photos from the exhibition opening reception on September 7, 2024.
Despite their historical presence within the state of Minnesota, Latina and Latinx people remain perpetual “newcomers” in the state’s mainstream imagination. Forgotten and “rediscovered” countless times, Latina and Latinx people have been forced to repeatedly claim and reclaim space — both physically and metaphorically — within the state’s history, cultural institutions and society at large.
In the largest survey show of its kind to date within the state of Minnesota, Latina and Latinx Minnesota: Re/claiming Space in Times of Change, 41 self-identifying Latina women and Latinx non-binary artists from across the state, representing multiple generations, artistic disciplines, nationalities and ethnicities, unite to challenge perceptions and celebrate their presence in Minnesota, as well as within the global contemporary art world. Through the power of art, these Minnesota women and nonbinary artists with ancestral roots in Latin America are opening new conversations and reimagining these re/claimed spaces for future generations — by us, for us, about us. This will not be the last or only show of its kind, but only just the beginning.
Zamara Cuyún, Co-curator