Help Mexican Youths Fight Violence Through Art

The youngest artists of the community provoke reflection on the opposition of identity and immigration in San Agustin Calvario. 

During the summer, members of San Agustin Calvario’s families living in the United States are present in the memory of the community upon the town celebration of San Augustin.  This year, the youngest members of the community became the center of attention by remembering the absent relatives and question the community with art about identity and how immigration affects them. 

A group of 40 children artists from Mariano Abasolo Elementary School along with the guest Echo Artist worked in a summer workshop creating art and discussing who they are and how immigration is part of their lives.  The goal of the workshop was to develop iconography and narrative for the permanent mural addressing immigration and identity that in the following weeks will be painted in San Agustin Calvario. 

Through different games, exercises and discussions, the children learned about environmental issues and drew their reality that later will materialize in mandalas (geometric figures that represent the universe) that speak about the eternal movement that characterizes their community.  With self-portraits, representations of the nature, and scale models of their town, they generated iconography and wrote stories that became the essence of the exciting public art project.

A group of eight young high school student muralists, along with the children, will give voice to the community and paint in the following months a mural that will stimulate participation and serve as a reference at the same time that it questions the community about the meaning of immigration in San Agustin Calvario.