A collaboration between Cornell faculty, students and Ithaca community members is bringing together a monthlong event in downtown Ithaca, focused on Latine artists.
“We Are La Voz” kicks off May 2 with an opening reception at Orozco Gallery Pop-Up, 115 S. Cayuga St., and include activities ranging from artist talks to musical performances to story times for children during the month of May.
“All of us share a sense of common concern about what’s going on nationally and internationally, and we wanted to do something positive and celebratory in a time when so much of the news seems bad,” said Debra Castillo, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Emerson Hinchliff Chair of Hispanic Studies and professor of Comparative Literature in the College of Arts & Sciences. “The event foregrounds and highlights Latina women and their resilience and knowledge. All of us can learn from them how to engage in the vastly changing reality that we’re encountering all the time.”
Yen Ospina, a Colombian-American artist and president of Ithaca’s Latino Civic Association, is spearheading the effort. “I‘m not thinking of this as only a gallery of art, but a hub for community creativity,” said Ospina, who has created similar pop-up exhibits in Ithaca and at Vanderbilt University.
The exhibit will include work by local artists, Cornell students and artists from Colombia, who doctoral student Carolina Osorio Gil met while working on her dissertation, which relates to campesinos, or small farmers, in the country who are organizing to protest hydroelectric dams that are displacing them from their lands.
Along with their work, the exhibit catalog will include stories and images about the Colombian artists’ activism. “It’s important for them to know that their struggle is heard in other places,” Osorio Gil said.
Ospina’s own work will also be on display, including some pieces from her most recent series of paintings, “Fragments of Becoming,” which include thread woven into the artworks.
“They’re about transformation, about going through difficult experiences and understanding that even though they have been traumatizing, those experiences have made me tenacious and ambitious,” she said. “They’ve made me a survivor.”
Cornell student Serena Moscarella ’25 has been helping Osorio Gil with her research and will be working during the month of May at the exhibit, taking photos and answering visitors’ questions in English and Spanish.
“One artist I have met virtually is María Valentia Ricardo, who is an aspiring educator and artist who makes beautifully crafted photographs of the members of the MRV (Movimiento Ríos Vivos) and captures the life of the river and movement through her art,” Moscarella said. “I am excited to see the images of her work from Colombia presented at the gallery.”
Most of the pieces in the exhibit will be textile-based, using fabric, thread, beads and embroidery, Ospina said, but some are mixed media.
Some events for the month include:
- May 2, 5-9 p.m.: Opening reception
- May 7, 5-6 p.m.: Spanish story time
- May 10, 7-8 p.m.: Rueda dance class
- May 14, 7-8:30 p.m.: Venissa Santi Trio music night
- May 18, 5-6 p.m.: Lilypad Puppet Theatre
- Artist talks and workshops at various times during the month
A full schedule of events can be found at the gallery’s website.
The organizers hope the gallery will feel welcoming and open to all.
“So often in some communities, art can be intimidating, so Yen is turning this empty storefront into not just an art gallery, but a cultural space,” Castillo said. “It opens up the possibility for richer dialogues. There’s something for everyone in this space.”
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