A large colorful mural is taking shape in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Murals with a message have a well established tradition in the political history of Latin America and the Caribbean. So when the Center decided to commission a work of art, muralist and activist Marela Zacarias was a natural choice as its first artist-in-residence.
“We have a new space we wanted to animate, not in a passive sense but with art that brings in students and faculty,” says Center director Mark Overmyer-Velázquez. “The mural will help engage people in conversation both within the University community around issues of Latin America and with the Latin American-origin community outside UConn.”
Zacarias, a resident of Brooklyn, New York with roots in Mexico City, is mid-way through painting a striking 18’ x 10’ mural with the provisional title “Conquest.” It dominates the Center’s lobby.
Zacarias says the colonization experience inspired her response to the Center’s request for a mural representative of the entire region. “All of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have gone through colonization,” she says. “With this mural I’m raising the question of what to do to stop a colonization process that through neo-liberal policies continues to take over cultures, natural resources, and small economies.
“It’s not up to me to tell people what needs to be done to fix the problems in Latin America and the Caribbean,” she adds.
The narrative of the brilliantly colored piece moves left to right, beginning with an image of an Indian mother and child living in harmony with nature, a relationship symbolically continued with Zacarias’ depiction of a pyramid. Next to the pyramid is a Catholic church.
Zacarias says that when Catholicism came to Latin America, “the pyramids were destroyed and churches were built on top of the ruins.”
For the mural’s right edge, she plans the image of a Wal-Mart. “The building is spreading roots that look like a tumor, symbolic of the economic takeover of the native culture,” she says.
Zacarias, who has painted more than two dozen murals in the United States and Mexico, has also been artist-in-residence for the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Her sponsors have included the National Endowment for the Arts, The Charter Oak Cultural Center of Hartford, and the Mexican Electrical Workers Union.
A native of Mexico City, she graduated from Kenyon College with an individualized major she developed, Social Movements in Art and Religion. She has taught mural art in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, and cofounded Connecticut’s Latinos Against the War and the Regional Coalition of Immigrant Rights. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and is pursuing an MFA in painting at Hunter College.
Part of Zacarias’ role as artist-in-residence for the current academic year has been to speak to UConn students in response to invitations from faculty. Classes she has addressed include art, history, political science, and Spanish, on topics ranging from immigration to her own work within the context of the mural painting tradition.
Some UConn art students are also assisting Zacarias with the mural. Students are priming the wall and helping with a new technique she is exploring, making the mural three-dimensional by incorporating metal mesh in the portrait of the mother and child.
Overmyer-Velázquez, an associate professor of history, hopes Zacarias’ work will increase the Center’s visibility.
“Come look at the mural,” he says. “It has an aesthetic quality that’s transformative, as well as a critical intellectual side, and it demonstrates how artists are very powerful interlocutors between society and academia, between social justice and classroom work. It’s beautiful.”
The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies is located at 2006 Hillside Road, on the second floor of the Ray Ryan Building. An opening celebrating the mural is planned for March 18, combining the event with the arrival of Jorge Duany as scholar-in-residence at the Center.
