National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 – October 15 and highlights and celebrates Hispanic and Latino heritage and identity in the United States. Hispanic (those from Spanish-speaking countries) and Latin (those from Latin America) culture is rife with history that enriches the communities we dwell in. Columbia is one of these diverse spaces, and the art that emerges from this city, specifically, is inundated with a multitude of cultural perspectives. This Hispanic Heritage Month, Jasper encourages all patrons to seek out multidisciplinary art from Hispanic and Latino/a artists and to explore how the creators’ backgrounds affect their work. Don’t know where to start? Jasper talked with six Columbia-based artists about how their cultural identity affects their creative process. Learn about them and their work below.
Daniel Esquivia Zapata
Daniel Esquivia Zapata – Visual Artist
Describe the kind of art you make.
Daniel’s work explores ideas about historical memory, official historical narratives, and what he terms the politics of remembering. He does this through life-size figurative drawings that combine historical texts, the human body, plants, and animals to generate strong spaces that work as poetic imagery, probing the dynamics of narratives in history and historical memory. This represents an exercise not only of why and what, but also of how we remember, especially in societies with conflicting narratives, obfuscated historical memories, and legacies of colonialism. He uses a combination of traditional figure drawing techniques, liquid charcoal and fragmented print and hand-written texts to draw on several layers of mylar, creating life size drawings that combine representations of the human body, plants, and animals to create news bodies that work as metaphors for political bodies intersected by history, newspaper articles and archives. With these drawings Daniel seeks to unveil the "place of memory" within our bodies amid intersecting discourses, making tangible the essence of our collective past and present. His work has driven him to create images that replace the common container metaphor of memory with one that understands memory as something dynamic and interconnected; something alive, inhabited by ideas, narratives, and discourses that live, age, die (or are killed); something like an ecosystem of memories and narratives, and ecosystem that is inhabited by beings of texts.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
In Daniel's life, a multiplicity of narratives and multinational experiences has made him think deeply about the dynamics of discourse and narratives in our societies, especially as an Afro-Latino in the Americas. For Daniel, the intersection of different identities has profoundly influenced his work. His experiences as the son of a human rights lawyer and a social worker in a multiethnic and multiracial family in Colombia; as a victim of forced displacement from his hometown in 1989; as an Afro-Colombian who studied at a HBCU in the US South [Benedict College]; and as a citizen living in Colombia and grappling with the legacies and present realities of its civil war; these experiences have all presented points of encounter with the forces of history’s multiple faces—unofficial, alternative, contested, surviving—that build and situate someone’s identity.
Alejandro García-Lemos
Alejandro García-Lemos – Visual Artist
Describe the kind of art you make.
Alejandro García-Lemos is a visual artist based in Columbia, South Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana. He holds a MA in Latin American Studies from Florida International University in Miami, and a BA in Graphic Design from the School of Arts at the National University in Bogotá, Colombia. His work focuses on social issues, mostly on aspects of immigration, sexuality, biculturalism, religion, and community. His works have been shown mostly in the Southeast. Alejandro is a former member of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC), as well as the founder of Palmetto & LUNA, a non-profit organization promoting Latino Arts and Cultures in South Carolina since 2007. Lately his work has been shown in Colombia.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
For this particular question I had to look up the exact definition of cultural identity … Cultural identity is a part of a person's identity, or their self-conception and self-perception, and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality, gender, or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. Therefore my cultural identity is omnipresent in my work, as I had mentioned many times before, I am three times a minority, I am Latinx, gay, and immigrant, how could you avoid those aspects as an intrinsic part of all your art?
Emily Moffitt
Emily Moffitt – Visual Artist
Describe the kind of art you make.
The type of art I create boils down to what I have the most fun with. I'm still trying to make my way in and have my foot in the door of the Columbia art scene! Like most Gen Z artists, I got into art from a young age via immense media consumption: video games, anime, cartoons, comics, and the list continues. As a result, the kind of work I create typically falls under the "illustration" category. I go back and forth between illustration and fine art, and sometimes I still think the distinction shouldn't even matter! As a recent college graduate who has now experienced the adulthood rite of passage that is working a 9-5 while still having time for hobbies, as long as I take even 10 minutes of my day to get my hands moving and draw something in my sketchbook, it's a successful day for me.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
The "fine art" I created started with a body of work that explored my heritage and connected to it more after my grandmother passed away in 2021, and I aim to continue it either by maintaining the "dreamscape" title or by starting a new collection. My goal in the fine art world is to create a body of work that I'm constantly thinking about, called "My Mother's Kitchen," since the closest ties I have to my Puerto Rican heritage stem from cuisine, my relationship with my mom, and the amount of time I spent growing up in and around the kitchen watching my mother make the recipes she grew up making with my grandmother. At this point, it's just a matter of me finding the time, and holding myself accountable, that's preventing me from following through! I do find that my mixed heritage sometimes feels like an obstacle when I do work, however, and that's an internalized hurdle I try to overcome when I create, too. Taíno symbology persists throughout my heritage-based work, and I wanted to also focus on the importance of my relationships with my mom and sister. My Puerto Rican heritage has been driven and shaped only by women in my life, and I wanted to pay homage to that, especially since my sister and I feel the same internalized obstacle of sometimes feeling "not Latina enough."
Claire Jiménez – Author
Describe the kind of art you make.
Claire Jiménez is a Puerto Rican writer who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York. She is the author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2019) and What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central, 2023). She received her M.F.A. from Vanderbilt University and her PhD in English with specializations in Ethnic Studies and Digital Humanities from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. In 2019, she co-founded the Puerto Rican Literature Project, a digital archive documenting the lives and work of hundreds of Puerto Rican writers from over the last century. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
My writing is very much influenced by the work of past Puerto Rican writers, especially the Nuyorican poets. I am thinking of Pedro Pietri's "The Puerto Rican Obituary" and the work of Judith Ortiz Cofer. I remember reading Silent Dancing and "The Story of My Body" for the first time as a young person, who had a hard time finding books by any Puerto Rican authors in the bookstore in the nineties. These texts were inspiring to me as a young reader, and they definitely shaped me as a writer.
Loli Molina Muñoz
Loli Molina Muñoz – Author
Describe the kind of art you make.
I write poetry and fiction. I have just finished my first poetry chapbook manuscript in English, and I also have a feminist dystopia novella in Spanish, both of them searching for a warming publishing house.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
Being born and raised in Málaga, Spain, I grew up immersed in both Spanish and English language thanks to literature, music, and pop culture, which deeply influenced my work. However, I have also lived in Coventry (UK), Wisconsin, and finally moved to South Carolina in 2013. For this reason, my work explores themes of identity, feminism, migration, and the intersections between cultures.
[ALMA] SPANISH
Querida madre:
Estos días pienso mucho en usted.
Ayer me acordé de su guiso de
carne y quise hacer uno yo.
No me supo igual.
Me faltaba el sabor añadido de sus
manos y el olor de su delantal.
Los niños dijeron que estaba muy
bueno. Yo les di las gracias y sonreí.
Dos lágrimas que se escaparon
disimulando para no ser vistas.
Tampoco vieron las dos cartas del
banco avisando del desahucio.
Les dije que vamos a pasar unos
días en casa de Alejandra.
Les hizo ilusión pasar un tiempo
con sus primos y eso me alivió.
Luego recordé aquella vez que
usted me dijo que eligiera mi
muñeca favorita.
Crucé el desierto de la mano de
Alejandra con la muñeca pegada
a mi pecho como un amuleto.
Aún conservo mi muñeca.
Aún tengo a Alejandra.
Voy a estar bien.
No se preocupe.
[ALMA] ENGLISH
Dear mother,
These days I think about you all the time.
Yesterday I remembered your beef
stew and I made one myself.
It did not taste the same.
It did not have that extra flavor from
your hands or the smell of your apron.
The kids said that they liked it.
I thanked them and smiled.
Two tears escaped trying not
to be seen by them.
They did not see the two eviction
letters from the bank either.
I told them that we are going to stay
some days at Alejandra’s.
They were happy about spending
time with their cousins and that soothed me.
Later I remembered that time
you told me to choose my favorite doll.
I crossed the desert holding Alejandra’s
hand and the doll stuck
to my chest like an amulet.
I still keep my doll.
I still have Alejandra.
I’ll be fine.
Don’t worry.
Giovanna Montoya
Giovanna Montoya – Ballet Dancer
Describe the kind of art you make.
I’m a professional ballet dancer, so my art is dance. Ballet is a theatrical art form that integrates music, dance, acting and scenery to convey a story, or a theme.
Describe the role your cultural identity has in your work.
My cultural identity represents who I am; a dedicated, driven, disciplined, strong woman, which stands up for what’s right, and never gives up. I am always aiming to move forward, trying to do better every day, even if it is little by little, and working hard to achieve my dreams and goals. These have been imperative assets to possess, that have helped me to become a professional ballet dancer with 15+ years of experience. Ballet is a beautiful but difficult art form, which requires a lot of time, sacrifice, effort, love, endless hours of training, and a great deal of discipline and dedication. I would never have become a professional ballet dancer if it weren’t for the commitment, dedication, responsibility, and integrity that my parents showed and instilled in me from a young age. Coming into this country as an immigrant it’s very difficult, and you have to work very hard to achieve success. That’s something my parents made very clear to me from the beginning, and they led by example. Always working hard, never giving up and excelling in their fields. My dad is a statistician for the Mayo Clinic. My mom is a Veterinarian doctor and was a University Professor in my home Country Venezuela. I’m so thankful for my parents and my cultural identity that has shaped me, and played a pivotal role in the person that proudly I am today.