What does sacred space look like to you?
Artists and co-curators Bianca Dominguez and Larysa Medina asked dozens of Latino youth and adult artists to answer this question through art.
The answers became "Creating Sacred Spaces: Reconnecting to Identity and Culture," a new visual arts exhibit at the Genesis Gallery at the Lakewood United Methodist Church.
This isn’t a political show. The exhibit is rooted in community, culture and prayer in a time when many of the exhibit participants face an uncertain future — including the threat of arrest and deportation.
Some of the artists created work about finding sacred space in nature. Others in angels, Christianity, or Mixteca and Aztec spirituality.
One artist was confused, uncertain what sacred space meant to hear. Dominguez explained that listening to music and creating art at home might be enough.
Dominguez says both art and prayer are shared experiences that connect people beyond borders and laws. They are survival tools in hard times, and they’re especially relevant for some of the newer immigrants participating in the show.
Many artists in the exhibit are acutely aware of rising anti-immigrant sentiment. They fear arrest under the incoming presidential administration.
“Those people who come in newly have to deal with weird attitudes and angry people at times,” Dominguez said. “There’s also people who will create sacred space for them to keep their livelihood. There’s people out there who will open their homes and will try to accommodate them as much as possible and make them feel like they’re at home here.”
This exhibit aims to give artists sanctuary from bad news and bleak times.
Yet the work in the show spans Latino cultures, religions and perspectives.
Some of the participants have families that have lived in Denver for decades, while others are new arrivals from Venezuela.
Participants are young — from 12 to 25. And while they gave different answers about the meaning of sacred space, the work gels together, Medina said.
As Dominguez sees it, prayer and the sacred are universal experiences that connect everybody—even those who don’t know they pray. The show creates a safe space for people of varying traditions to express that.
“No matter where we come from, we're all the same,” Dominguez said. “We all have the same grief, the same feeling, the same blood.”
The curators and the artists:
Medina is best known for creating Colorado’s Chicano license plate, and her muralism and chalk art. Dominguez is a life-long artist and currently a stay-at-home mom. Both have spent time in the Aztec dance community.
The duo connected through Metro State University’s Denver Journey Through Our Heritage. The work-study program has brought together generations of Chicano students, said Renee Fajardo, the program’s director. And those relationships stick long after graduation.
Many of the artists in the Sacred Spaces show come from the Journey program.
Dominguez said Journey has taught her and many others about too-often erased histories of Latinos in the United States. When she left her childhood Catholicism, she connected with her Mixteca spirituality through the program.
The Chicano Humanities and Arts Council and the Colorado Folk Arts Council are also supporting the project.
Learning about those traditions was instrumental in staying grounded in a world where, too often, Indigenous spirituality has been erased. And this show reclaims those traditions and practices, a sense of the sacred and prayer that helps people get through the most challenging times.
“We are all connected and need to find safe spaces to express, be part of, to grow to be better human beings,” Dominguez said. “When we are babies we all first learn how to dance, make art and sing before we learn how to talk or anything else. And so just remembering how basic our existence is at the core is what creating a sacred space is. Art, song and dance, history are sacred because that is what is left after we’re gone and is what is passed down to the next generation and generations after that.”
The sacred connects us all.
“Creating Sacred Spaces: Reconnecting to Identity and Culture” has an opening reception on Friday, Dec. 6, from 5-8 p.m. at the Genesis Gallery at the Lakewood United Methodist Church, 1390 Brentwood St., Lakewood. Entry is free and open to the public.
The show runs through Jan. 4. For more information, visit the Lakewood United Methodist Church online.
