On view at the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center in Cleveland's Brooklyn neighborhood is an exhibit for audiences to enter Northeast Ohio's Latinx community - "Doors to My Barrio."
Started in 2016, the ongoing series spotlights many of the talented Latinx visual artists living in this region.
This year a group of Northeast Ohio artists continued the project by creating doors for five additional Spanish-speaking countries.
Letitia Lopez, Executive Director of Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center
"'Doors to My Barrio' was started in 2016. It was just on an idea from a donation of doors that I received from a friend...And at first I just thought, ‘What am I going to do with these doors?’ And we came up with the idea [like] the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitars. We wanted to do the doors and then have them spread around our ward here. We decided that each door would represent a Spanish speaking country."
Mariela Paz, artist/Honduras door
"I made the door of Honduras. I had the idea of showing the beauty of what is Mayan, with Lenca and with coffee, which is very much part of the Honduran culture. So I painted Ixchel, who is the Mayan goddess of the moon. She has a rabbit, she is always carrying a rabbit. And also at the bottom I made a sample of alfarería or pottery Lenca, which is an ethnic group in Honduras. And there are also some things, some sprigs of coffee, some typical houses. That enchanted me. I enjoyed it so much that now any door I see, I'm going to want to paint doors."
Maria de Jesus Paz, artist/Argentina door
"One of my best friends of the soul of more than 30 years, she's Argentine. So I tell them, 'Do you know what? Surprise! I’m doing the Argentina door.' Because I loved when we talked, and she taught me how to drink maté. So, practically, here is a summary of the topics of conversation with my friends. And I concentrated on what they really are: sun, tango, maté."
Forrest Stone, artist/Spain door
"I was given Spain as my theme. Bullfighters [are] very common in Spanish artworks and everywhere. It's a matador in a matador suit, and he's he's pulling the little blanket, like when the bull goes... looks like the flag of Spain."
Angy Hanon, artist/Bolivia door
"I wanted to include the Indigenous population of Bolivia, because a big percentage of their the people are Indigenous. So it's the Aymara and the Quechua people. I included two women looking at the Andes, and then I included a sunset. One of the rays is the Wiphala flag, which is actually a national flag. It represents the Indigenous people, which I've never heard of that before. I've never heard of an Iindigenous flag included as a flag of the country."
Kenron Morgan, artist/Uruguay door
"Back in the colonial times [Uruguay] was a place where the Africans came and it was a place where they came for freedom. That was where they distributed themselves into America essentially. So I have all these different melting pots of people in this door."
"Doors to My Barrio" is on view by appointment at the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center in Cleveland.
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