Overview:
- "Trabajadores" opens Friday at La Galería in Southwest Detroit, showcasing Latino workers and artists with 94-year-old painter Nora Chapa Mendoza as juror.
- The exhibition pivoted from a Cesar Chavez tribute after abuse allegations emerged, shifting focus to a broader celebration of Latino workers.
- Artist and construction worker Alberto Ramirez says the show is a way to expose his "true way of living" as a an artist and ceremonial leader.
An art show opening Friday in Southwest Detroit seeks to celebrate the “people who make the world turn.”
“Trabajadores,” a Spanish term for workers, is an exhibition organized by Dalia Reyes, an independent curator and interdisciplinary artist with over 20 years of experience, to highlight Latino workers who are often behind the scenes, but integral to daily life, she said.
Painter Nora Chapa Mendoza juried the show. She is a 2024 Kresge Eminent Artist and her work on migrant laborers and Chicano identity is featured in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
The opening reception is 5-8 p.m. Friday, May 1 and runs through May 28 at La Galería, a community art space run by the Mexicantown Community Development Corp. at 2835 Bagley St.
Mendoza, 94, was born to Mexican parents in Weslaco, Texas and moved in 1953 to Michigan, where she has lived in the Metro Detroit area since.
While living in Highland Park during segregation, she said she was inspired by Black artists carving a space for themselves, but felt like the “brown got lost in the middle,” referring to Latinos.
Mendoza said her work, and this show, is a way to bring attention to Hispanic artists.
“This was a way to make the Hispanic people proud of themselves, what they do, where they came from, and why you eat their food,” Mendoza said with a laugh.
How ‘Trabajadores’ developed
“Trabajadores” was originally a show to celebrate labor rights icon Cesar Chavez, showcasing a gallery of reproductions of archival photos of Chavez assembled by journalist Martina Guzman.
When allegations the United Farm Workers (UFW) co-founder groomed and abused girls for years were reported, Reyes said she, Guzman, and La Galería “had to pivot really, really fast. We were all very shocked.”
The focus shifted to a broader exhibition on workers, from construction laborers to healers and farmworkers.
La Galería wasn’t just a location for the show, Reyes said, and was integral in uplifting “our gente” after the “awful” Chavez news, she said. “Trabajadores” will be an annual show, and an opportunity to “turn something beautiful from something bleak,” she said.
Reyes brought in Mendoza for her storied work on the labor movement – some of her paintings were commissioned by Chavez in 1986 to become UFW greeting cards – and civil rights themes in her paintings, ranging in style from abstraction to realism.
The show opens the gallery doors to artists like Alberto Ramirez and Vidal Perez, who said they were inspired by Mendoza, and paint in the winter down season from their construction day jobs.
“It’s beautiful to see that it created an opportunity and inspired people that could never see themselves in a gallery,” Reyes said.
Perez presented a painting titled “The Tlachiquero,” a term used for a person who harvests agave, depicting a man in a thick agave field. The painting brings to life a childhood memory of drinking the sap from the plant, Perez said.
Ramirez, who leads ceremonies and Aztec dances, showed a violet painting of a grandmother holding a child’s head during a ceremony, which Mendoza wanted in the show, as she sees ceremonies as work, too, she said.
Reyes said exhibitions like “Trabajadores” are inclusive.
“Sometimes with art and exhibitions, it could have a pretentious air to it, where they feel like they’re not welcomed,” Reyes said. “Detroit does a really good job of offering artists opportunities.”
Ramirez said the show is meaningful because although he makes a living in construction, he said the show is a way to expose his “true way of living” as an artist and a ceremonial leader.
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