By Jonathan Turner, Hola Iowa
A major new exhibit of Latinx art from a Buffalo, N.Y. curator is at the Des Moines Art Center from Oct. 24 through Jan. 24, 2027.
Inspired by a 2008 poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way” celebrates the creativity of Latinx painters. It showcases 58 artists who enrich the landscape of contemporary painting, introducing new approaches to form, materials, and subject matter. Many expand the boundaries of what can be considered a painting, experimenting with a wide variety of unconventional materials.
Organized by Dr. Andrea Alvarez, associate curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (where it was first shown), “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way” embraces the complexity and heterogeneity of Latinx identity and Latinx art alike, according to the museum. All the artists live and work in the U.S. but have roots in Central America or the Caribbean.
Artists challenge traditional expectations of painting
Alvarez said recently she wanted to highlight living artists.
“I got more excited about it because the reality is that these artists are challenging, subverting, totally throwing out the window so many of the disciplinary expectations that they’ve been given in art school or in museums or wherever they’ve learned about art,” she said.
“These artists are telling us, these categories don’t matter to us. These categories are archaic, they’re irrelevant, and the most useful way to think about them is as something to push up against,” Alvarez said. “It’s contemporary Latinx painting, but it’s showing the ways in which they’re troubling that discipline. So many of the works don’t even have paint in them. They might just be paper or clay.”
Two examples are one that’s a monumental painting structure, on adobe, and another who used paper mache to make expanded visions on historical artworks in piñata form.
All the art in the exhibit was created since 2020, and like many immigrants, the artists use expression to “navigate the world that they’re living in,” she said. “It’s the same that we are seeing with Latino art. But I will say that in the last 5 or 10 years, the art world has started to pay attention for the first time in a meaningful and wide, broad way to this population that has been making work for decades.”
Quad Cities native Yvette Mayorga featured in the exhibition
“There are so many different ways in which these artists honor either their personal heritage, whether it’s where they’re from or their parents,” Alvarez said, noting a big piece at the entrance in Des Moines that’s “a really knockout pink artwork made by the artist Yvette Mayorga,” honoring her mother’s work as a pastry decorator.
Yvette Mayorga, a Quad Cities native, is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois.
“As these artists were growing up, these parents were working to make a life for their kids,” she said. “And now these kids are grown up and elevating their parents’ labor in the context of an art museum.
The exhibit not only reflects diversity of artists and Latinx people, but Alvarez hopes visitors will gain “a broader appreciation for the contributions of Latinx people in general. There’s a little bit of everything so that there’s something for everybody.”
Alvarez hopes the exhibit inspires young artists
She’s happy the Des Moines museum is hosting and credited director Kelly Baum as “really enthusiastic from the start.”
“I’m really thrilled,” Alvarez said. “This is the first stop on the tour, and it’s just been such an honor to have it here and to have it in their really capable and welcoming hands.”
“The Art Center is just truly committed to showing the work of Latinx artists, showing the work of contemporary artists,” she added. “It’s been really nice to hear the way that there’s also a commitment to showing the work of local artists.”
Alvarez also aims to inspire young artists.
“My hope is also that young artists come through and think, gosh, this is all accessible. It’s possible for me to make and exhibit in a place like this one day,” she said.
The exhibition also reflects the curator’s own Latinx identity
A native of Ecuador, the curator has a personal interest in promoting Latinx artworks.
“This exhibition, working on it, actually helped me understand myself a little better,” Alvarez said. “Growing up it was always like you don’t know which bubbles to fill in on those standardized tests and things.”
“Coming to understand and trying to write about how everyone else should appreciate the breadth of what it is to be Latino, Latina, it made me realize I don’t have to fit into a bubble, and it’s okay that I do not fit necessarily in what people expect,” she said. “Working on this exhibition really helped me better understand my position within the diaspora, really embrace my own Latinidad, and feel a real sense of pride in the work that I am able to do to elevate the work of my fellow Latinx people.”
After Des Moines, “Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way” will continue to the Phoenix Art Museum and the Frye Art Museum in Seattle.
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