New exhibit highlights traditional Mexican art

Jessica Hernandez began her speech at the opening of HablARTE with the sentence, "What I want to talk about is love."\nHernandez stood in front of a crowd at Mathers Museum Saturday afternoon, contemplating the results of seven months worth of dedication to her program.\nThe program, HablARTE -- the Spanish words hablar (to talk) and arte (art) strung together -- is Hernandez's creation. Hernandez is a graduate student pursuing her Ph.D. in sociology. \n"HablARTE: Talking through Art" at the Mathers Museum was a celebration of two new exhibits at the museum. \nHernandez, who works for Bloomington's Community and Family Resources, said she wanted to create an artistic space for Latino teenagers.\n"There aren't many public spaces where immigrant adolescents are very valued," Hernandez said.\nShe said she was hoping to initiate an after-school program that would help them discuss their migration experiences. \nThrough research, Hernandez discovered the book "Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States" by Jorge Durand and Douglass Massey. Retablos are paintings on wood or tin on various artistic themes. Although retablos are unpolished art, Hernandez found them simple, yet powerful, and the appropriate vehicle for the adolescents to display their experiences and emotions. \n"(The program) started off as a couple of Latin teen dances," Hernandez said of how she gathered the group members. The group has met every Friday since March, which has mostly focused on getting to know each other. The discussion topics differed from what it's like being an immigrant in Bloomington and in the United States to the difference in lifestyles between the states and their native country. They started studying the history of retablo paintings.\nThe teenagers started painting, and as Hernandez said, "it opened a window into the lives of the students." \n"It was a remarkable project," Hernandez said. "It was a project I personally invested in, as well as many other people." \nDuring her speech, she said "love that branches out to the community" was the driving force behind this project. \n"I hoped the program humanized (the immigrant adolescents) to the greater community," Hernandez said.\nHer goal was to challenge the common assumptions of who or what an immigrant is. \n"The (teenagers) are a part of the community," she said. "I was hoping to foster understanding and respect and to be caring." \nThe event incorporated various workshops, including retablo painting for children, Mexican corridos (ballads), poetry reading, and other activities that illustrated the Latino culture. \n"I was impressed by the diversity, both of the specific programs and workshops and of the audience who took part in them," said Geoff Conrad, director of Mathers Museum. "Saturday's event went very well." \n"The students who participated in the HablARTE project come from a different cultural background than most of their classmates, but through the project, they've shown that they share many of the same concerns as their fellow students," Conrad said. "The project is a graphic expression of both the diversity of individual cultures and the unity of human culture itself."\n-- Contact staff writer Christine Jang at chrjang@indiana.edu.