The Murray Art Guild has been selected as one of several venues across Kentucky to host the Kentucky Arts Council's traveling exhibit, Our Kentucky Home: Hispanic/Latin American Visual Art in the Commonwealth. MAG director Debi Henry Danielson and MSU Assistant Professor of Photography Cintia Segovia Figueroa speak to Tracy Ross about the exhibit.
Our Kentucky Home was previously at the Carson Center in Paducah in November and December 2021. After it leaves Murray, it will travel to Boyd's Station Gallery in Cynthiana, Kentucky. Danielson says the purpose of this traveling exhibit is to highlight diversity.
"4.6% of Kentuckians identify as Hispanic or Latino," Danielson says. "Part of it's celebrating that difference in the state. But what the exhibit also helps us see is the difference and diversity within the Hispanic culture. Everybody's different. I encourage people to come see the exhibit and see a different flavor, but you'll find a little bit of yourself in the exhibit as well."
"This group of artists that are in the exhibition resemble their emotions and relationships to different places and the longing for those places," Figueroa adds. "But they're also looking forward to their home country, the United States, how they look for work for a future, or just creating a new identity, or adapting to American culture."
"I think it's very much about a sense of place," Danielson agrees. "It has a lot to do with community. That's building community in that new place, as well as that sense of community from another place."
Figueroa's work touches on both community and contrast. "Coming from Mexico City, it's a town full of flavors and spicy foods and contrast. I wanted to create art where I could express this contrast visually and create new realities where I can feel that I'm in both countries. That I'm in Mexico and the United States."
While Figueroa's work highlights contrast, other pieces focus on different elements. "The exhibition doesn't treat the Latinos as one monolithic culture," Figueroa explains. "It allows for the multiplicity of realities in the way of how the media is used but also the themes and the relationship to these new experiences."
Our Kentucky Home is on display at the Murray Convention and Visitors Bureau at 206 S. 4th Street. The exhibit is free and open to the public during business hours of 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.
"You can also find more information on the Kentucky Arts Council website, where they do have a link to a slideshow. SO, if you can't make it to see the show, you could take a look at that," Danielson ends.
For more information on the Murray Art Guild, visit the MAG website.
