From Aqui, From Alla

Curated by Carina Martinez

Artists: Albany Andaluz, Aida Lizalde, and Estelle Maisonett

April 2021 

For many people of Latin American descent who were born or raised in the United States, fluency in the Spanish language is often perceived as an indicator of cultural authenticity and authority. Likewise, those who immigrate to the U.S. often feel pressured to become proficient in English or otherwise risk cultural and social isolation. The role that language plays in the Latinx context is one that could either unite or further alienate an individual from their cultural orientation. From Aqui, from Alla is an exhibition that contemplates the complex relationship between language and multicultural identity formation by investigating how Latinx artists Albany Andaluz, Estelle Maisonett, and Aida Lizalde each utilize language—English, Spanish, written, spoken, visual, and otherwise—to navigate and negotiate their hybridized selves. The exhibition’s title is inspired by the popular 1970 folk song called No Soy de Aquí Ni Soy de Allá (I Am Not from Here, Nor Am I from There) written by the late Argentine singer-songwriter Facundo Cabral. The lyric has since been borrowed and stretched by a variety of writers, musicians, and artists to describe the notion of in-betweenness that is broadly characteristic of the Latinx experience. Here, it is playfully rewritten in Spanglish, a blend of English and Spanish widely spoken among Latinx communities across the nation, and altered to reflect an attitude of acceptance and ownership of the multiple inherited environments, ideologies, and sayings that make us who we are. From Aqui, from Alla aims to stage a conversation among the practices of three artists who each radically perceive written, spatial, and material languages as extensions of their Latinx identities in such a way that transcends the simple bifurcation of speaking only Spanish or English. Rather than mourn what is often deemed “lost” when one lives at the crossroads of two or more cultural landscapes, this exhibition aims to celebrate the beauty in existing as a breathing collage of several legacies. We are from here, from there, and from where we have yet to arrive, too.