By From oil-painted art to dozens of screen paintings, the Museum of Latin American Art united lovers of Afro-Latinx culture on Sunday, Feb. 16, to celebrate the innovation and activism of prominent creatives.
Held throughout the museum and its Sculpture Garden, the celebration featured many artists and performers, including Los Cambalache and Darielle Williams, for their annual Afro-Latinx Festival.
Towards the back of the museum, standing in front of her own booth, was Judy Perez, a 67-year-old Transitional Kindergarten teacher who paints in her spare time.
During the festival, Perez sold several paintings, prints and stickers.
In addition to Judy Perez’s abstract paintings, she creates prints, jewelry and stickers of her artwork. Perez said she feels that the end results of her work are self-rewarding. Photo Credit: Dante Estrada
Perez said she expresses her frustrations with current political and global events through paintings of faces and expressions.
“Mostly things that are going on in the world. You know, the frustration or even the happiness,” Perez said, speaking about her art’s inspiration. “After a hard day of teaching, and I come home and that gets put out on a canvas.”
To Perez, the medium of art is what unites people.
Judy Perez has been doing abstract painting for over five years while she balances her job as a Transitional Kindergarten teacher. Photo Credit: Dante Estrada
For over three years, attendees Emilio Venegas Jr. and Nicole Marte have made a point to attend MOLAA’s annual Afro-Latinx Festival.
The two cite their enjoyment of the museum and how it creates space for Afro-Latinx artists.
“For them to have this event every year, during Black History Month, to be able to showcase that for Latinos is exciting, especially in southern California, where Afro-Latinos are so scarce,” Marte said. “We don’t really get to see many communities with us. It’s really exciting to see other folks of my background.”
Coming from the Bay Area to sell their handcrafted jewelry at the festival was Julisa Garcia, 42, who operates under her business, Soldadera.
Julisa Garcia handcrafts and designs her earrings, sometimes using laser printing. Photo Credit: Dante Estrada
Julisa Garcia crafts a wide variety of earrings based on Coyolxāuhqui, the Aztec goddess of the moon. The earrings are modeled after the same ones the Aztec goddess once wore. Photo Credit: Dante Estrada
With a small donation, Cesar Garcia would give a temporary tattoo based on the many screen printing artwork he created. Photo Credit: Dante Estrada
While Cesar Garcia said he does his best to look for a screen printing community in Long Beach after moving from Oaxaca, he uses his town of the San Bernardino area as inspiration.
“I try to apply that to my work. I’ve tried to touch those issues like homelessness, like home displacement,” he said. “Because I live in Inland Empire, and I also see those issues, [and] how they affect the community.”
Cesar Garcia’s artwork is created through a small screen-printer. He hopes to expand his artwork into larger murals on bigger screen-printers. Photo Credit: Dante Estrada
Jerry Limon, a 51-year-old artist from East Los Angeles, also participated in the festival as a vendor in the screen printing business.
For over 30 years, Limon has incorporated elements of Afro-Latinx culture into his own clothing and prints.
Jerry Limon, owner of Estilo Clothing Co., creates his own artwork , prints it onto shirts and sells physical prints of his work. Photo Credit: Dante Estrada
“What I want people to get out of it is just the beauty and the passion that comes from our intense cultures,” Limon said. “The cultures you see represent a lot in my art; Buba, Panama, Puerto Rico, Colombia, they all play tribute back to the African roots of their drumming…with the Spanish and Indigenous bloods to make this beautiful music, culture, dance and history.”
