Alex E. Chávez
A MIDSUMMER'S MURAL
This cross-institutional team has come together to understand the role of arts and creative expression among Midwestern Latina/o communities. We invite you to explore this site, view the art, and interpret the unique qualities of Latina/o artistic expression in the Midwest. You will see how the arts attest to all kinds of transnational experiences—from migration, to bi-national identities, to the social networks that Latina/o artists are a part of—that ultimately illuminate how aesthetic cultural production
What does it mean to be Latina/o in the Midwest amidst a stark anti-globalist moment? What exactly are the politics of “making America great again,” or in other words, reconstituting an idyllic white past in response to the perceived displacement of white-privilege? Such contemporary imaginings not only represent the fundamental exclusion of various minoritized others, but are equally premised on a certain social amnesia which positions, for our purposes, Latinas/os as perpetual newcomers. Our argument—in t
Our project considers the dynamics of change and transformation, and examines the role of the arts in advancing collective social expression in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Michigan. At the center of our study is not a unifying theory, but a thicket of homegrown vernacular theorizing emergent from the Latino community, embodied in aesthetics, and that tell the stories of mobility, exclusion and inclusion, place-making, and the cultural politics everyday life.
Alex E. Chávez
A MIDSUMMER'S MURAL