Art is a universal language, and Charleston’s Hispanic arts community is a prism of ideas and expressions seeking to be seen, heard and valued.
Three South Carolina arts organizations banded together to produce a statewide assessment of the current Hispanic/LatinX arts scene, which was presented at an Aug. 22 event at the Gibbes Museum in downtown Charleston entitled ALLIED4RT.
The 2024 assessment, funded by the South Carolina Arts Commission, Palmetto Luna Arts and the Hispanic Alliance, provides insight into the experiences, challenges and aspirations within the Hispanic/LatinX artistic community in South Carolina to ignite a deeper cultural understanding. Visit hispanicalliancesc.com/allied4art for the full report.
Hispanic residents accounted for 17 percent of South Carolina’s population growth last year, according to the United States Census. And the Charleston Hispanic Association’s president Enrique Grace said the Hispanic population is the fastest growing community in the United States.
Photographer Antonio Colón-Román, who served on the advisory committee for the assessment, moved to Charleston in 2014 and is originally from Puerto Rico. He works primarily in portrait and documentary photography and is currently working on projects in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. He said his work centers on the essence of people in the normality of life.
Charleston photographer Antonio Colón-Román captured an image of Holy Week in Chicahuaxtla, Oaxaca, Mexico.
The Hispanic arts community in Charleston and greater South Carolina has very few economic and organizational resources, Colón-Román said, yet it remains hopeful.
“Our art has the smell of Colombian coffee, it has the feeling of our Mexican music, it has the warm breeze of the Caribbean and the tenderness of our Andean people,” he said. “For our art to be understood, it needs to be understood from our roots and celebrated as what it is: a beautiful multiform human expression.”
Through interviews and surveys with 63 artists and 12 arts organizations in South Carolina, the 2024 LatinX/Hispanic arts assessment found that financial grant access and networking platforms are critical tools LatinX artists want access to. The main factor holding participants back was a struggle to find information about opportunities related to their artistic disciplines.
Charleston-based photographer Antonio Colón-Román, originally from Puerto Rico, captured Mexican celebrations in Summerville.
The assessment found that within the Hispanic arts community itself, there is a need for increased “word of mouth” and relationship building among artists and organizations.
The ALLIED4ART panel event at the Gibbes underlined the need for LatinX art organizations to streamline their communications by creating shared resources and artist directories, which could establish an infrastructure of support.
Other key takeaways from the report include expanding Hispanic/LatinX representation on boards and committees, ensuring artist access to training workshops and developing mentorship programs.
A tapestry of cultures and experiences
The disciplines represented in the assessment included painting, performance arts, mixed media, ceramic and sculpture, folk arts, graphic design, fine arts, writing, photography, drawing and jewelry. The nations represented included Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba, Panamá, Costa Rica, Perú, Argentina and El Salvador, reflecting the richness of diversity behind the terms Hispanic and LatinX.
Antonio Colón-Román snapped a photo in Savannah, Ga., of celebrants of Día de Muerto, a Mexican tradition.
Poet Will Davis, who also served on the advisory board of the assessment, moved to Charleston nine years ago and took up his mantle as a poet in 2018.
“We have this blanket identity ‘Latin/LatinX/Hispanic,’ but that’s a tapestry of culture and peoples,” said Davis, who is of Puerto Rican heritage. “How are we embracing more than just sugar skulls during Hispanic Heritage Month? Or everybody will just have tacos, right? But there’s so much more diversity and beauty within that identity. Are we reaching out to these different spaces within the Hispanic community to say, ‘tell me more about your culture’ — not just a one-off thing because we want to hit a quota.”
Antonio Colón-Román is a documentary photographer who said his work captures people in their everyday moments. Above is a portrait of a Triqui man. The Triqui are an Indigenous people of the western part of the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
There are education initiatives, productions and exhibitions that pop up in Charleston to amplify Hispanic arts and give voice to the immigrant experience, yet long periods of time seem to pass between them, said Kailey Jones, education coordinator at the Charleston Gaillard Center.
“It’s beautiful work, but what’s unfortunate is that it is so temporary in Charleston,” Jones said, who is Argentinian. “It comes and it goes.”
The Gaillard just had its first bilingual education performances last year, Jones said, which was a milestone. There’s an upcoming installation taking place Oct. 23-27 at The Gaillard called “Of All The People In All The World: American Democracy” by United Kingdom-based theater collective Stan’s Cafe. The installation represents community statistics using grains of rice, and the October installation will incorporate immigration statistics.
Jones and the Gaillard’s education team recently created an arts residency program for St. John’s High School in Johns Island called “Embracing Immigration Locally,” which will explore multicultural demographics within the community, incorporate artist talks and connect with the Stan’s Cafe installation.
Next year on May 2, the Ballet Hispánico company is coming to the Gaillard to present “CARMEN.maquia,” a lively dance performance reimagining the 1875 opera “Carmen” by French composer Georges Bizet. Visit gaillardcenter.org for details.
The nonprofit arts organization Art Pot has been working to strengthen the Charleston Latin community for the last 14 years through community theater, visual arts workshops, and various artistic projects, said Maribel Acosta, Art Pot’s executive director.
Currently Art Pot is finishing a documentary about the importance of arts education in school curriculums, she said, which is slated to finish post-production this year. The aim is to show the film in various schools in South Carolina and promote discussion panels.
This photo captures a Venezuelan immigrant in a refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico.
Art Pot hosts visual arts classes taught in Spanish for grades 6 through 12, and develops storytelling projects to present at community centers and distribute via social media to reach a wider audience.
“Our community is growing, and I am sure that the Latin artistic community will grow too, but it is still far too small and is not unified nor organized,” Acosta said. “That is the reason why we have focused on children and young people, planting (in them) the seed of interest to practice art.”
The grassroots community surrounding Art Pot is small but mighty, she said, and the volunteers and supporting organizations behind its efforts have formed a pillar in the Latin arts community in the Charleston area.
She said she hopes the Latin artists of the Lowcountry will communicate with each other to generate a more visible community, that they will work beyond their personal projects to build a unity and leave “a mark of our heritage, which is priceless.”