AARRTT
Views of Latino Identity
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
| TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE 89
By Joanne Milani
O ur America: The Latino Presence in American
Art” is a monumental exhibition of more than
90 diverse artworks. Ever since the mid-20th
century, immigrants from Cuba, Mexico and
“
the Dominican Republic, as well as residents of Puerto
Rico, flowed into the American Southwest and into
New York City, joining some already established Latino
communities. Many artists and social activists they
encountered there were wondering how they could
manage to live in an overwhelmingly Anglo culture
and still affirm their Latino heritage.
Xavier Viramontes’ 1973 offset lithograph, Boycott
Grapes, Support the United Farmworkers Union, features
a fierce Aztec god, his fists dripping with grape juice
that looks like blood. Calling upon his ancient Aztec
heritage and proud Mexican graphic traditions,
Viramontes employs both for a very American cause.
Born in 1947 in California, he is the son of Mexican
farmworkers including a Vietnam era veteran. With
his Boycott Grapes, he is participating in America’s
long-standing tradition of labor union activism, in this
case, Cesar Chavez’ United Farm Workers Union.
The works in the exhibition exude quiet
homesickness and cultural displacement. Miamibased
Maria Brito was about 14 when she came to the
United States under Operation Pedro Pan in 1961. In
Cuba, she was accustomed to a protective Catholic
environment. That’s not what she found in America.
In her 1990 installation, El Patio de Mi Casa (The
Patio of My House), she recreated a safe space: the
kitchen of a Cuban-American home. After all, the
kitchen is a place for family, food and love. On one
side of the installation is a child’s bed holding a potted
plant whose root system is outgrowing its pot. On the
other side is a kitchen sink with a photograph of little
girls in white dresses and a mask of the artist herself.
You feel that she is homesick for a lost childhood and
a lost country.
E. Carmen Ramos, the exhibit’s curator, chose to
title the show “Our America” because of an important
1891 essay by Cuban patriot Jose Marti titled “Nuestra
America.” She notes that, “the essay is widely regarded
as one of the first expressions of a Pan-Latin American
consciousness.” The words of Jose Marti could be
used to describe this exhibition: “A genuine man goes
to the roots. To be a radical is no more than that: to go
to the roots.” 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: This exhibit is on view through
January 22, 2017 at The Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach
Drive Northeast, St. Petersburg. For more information,
please call (727) 896-2667, or visit www.mfastpete.org.
This mixed media
work titled, El
Patio de Mi Casa, by
Maria Brito includes
acrylic paint, wood,
wax, latex, gelatin
silver prints and
found objects.
Xavier Viramontes’
lithograph is
Boycott Grapes,
Support the United
Farm Workers Union.
/www.mfastpete.org