Recuerdos explores the complexities that are generated by the re-contextualization of a quinceañera’s cultural celebration within a queer identity. It includes various paintings and sculptures and serves as the performance space for the artists’ quinceañera celebration. The exhibition defies social assumptions about queerness, femme identity, masculine identity, and their cultural identity. It aims to speak on the duality of trauma and joy that the artists have experienced being queer within the Latinx community. It is by focusing on this relationship that Recuerdos explores themes of neglect, self-acceptance, and nostalgia.

Recuerdos is a group exhibition curated by Moises Salazar, featuring works by Juan Arango Palacios, Lissette Bustamante and Moises Salazar.

The opening reception will take place at Co-Prosperity on August 14th from 6pm to 9pm. The use of masks and proof of vaccination will be required.

Open hours for Recuerdos are Wednesdays and Fridays 4-8 pm and Saturdays 2-6 pm. Make your viewing appointment here.

A Quinceñera celebration will take place at Co-Prosperity as a closing event on Sepetmeber 21st at 7pm.

Juan Arango Palacios was born in Pereira, Colombia, and was raised in a traditional Catholic home. Their traditional upbringing was cut short by a series of migrations that their family took seeking a better future. The family moved from Colombia to southern Louisiana where Juan’s sense of identity and belonging began to be skewed by their lack of knowledge of the English language, their unfamiliarity with American culture, and their internal struggle with a queer identity. Living in other parts of Louisiana and Texas, and being further subdued by the conservative culture in which they lived, Juan continued to live with a constant fear of their own identity throughout their youth. Juan graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has found a safe-haven within the queer community in Chicago.

As queer body that was raised in a post-colonial context in Colombia, my identity was shaped in the shadows of North American normativity. My sense of self was further confounded by a series of migrations that my family experience in search of work and a more prosperous future. Moving through varying homophobic and misogynistic cultures in Louisiana and Texas, I have formed a disembodied identity that is not attached to any specific homeland and has always been challenged by the general norm.

My practice works towards addressing the lived experiences of ambulant queer identities that have been marginalized within a diasporic or migratory context. Through the fluid and boundless medium of paint, I have been able to represent memories,places, people, and archetypes that I associate with the safety, survival, and endurance of queer bodies in spaces that challenge their existence. Also, through the process of weaving I am producing narrative objects that aim at expressing the stories of individuals within a similar context. Placing emphasis on color and composition, my work aims at creating images glorifying and fantasizing the idea of safety in a queer experience.

Lissette Bustamante is a Chicago-based multi-disciplinary artist that explores contemporary urban landscapes through multimedia installations, specializing in sculpture and digital mediums. Bustamante is a recent graduate of University of Illinois at Chicago.

Combining archived images with three-dimensional objects, I strive to curate an experience that embodies interactive integration. With materials such as metal, cement, and plastic, the work pays homage through visual parallels to industrialist urban landscapes, influenced by my upbringing in Chicago, IL. I am interested in abstracting images to mimic the formation of memory. By reprocessing family documents, my work alludes to the subjectivity of recollection while forefronting human interaction. Surrounded by a historically industrialized landscape with a huge immigrant population, it has informed my conflation of brutal aesthetics with intangible nostalgia.

MOISES SALAZAR is a non-binary multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois. Being first generation Mexican American has cemented a conflict within Moises Salazar’s political identity, which is the conceptual focus of their practice. Whether addressing queer or immigrant bodies, their practice is tailored to showcasing the trauma, history, and barriers these people face. Reflecting on the lack of space and agency they possess. Salazar presents queer and immigrant bodies in environments where they can thrive and be safe. It is by examining the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, queerness and the United States history that Moises Salazar addresses the reality of the barriers that immigrants and queer individuals face with the intention to begin to dismantle the myths and stereotypes used to criminalize and dehumanize them.

Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Woaw Gallery, Salon ACME, HAIR+NAILS, the Museum of contemporary art Chicago, NADA FAIR Chicago, Kohn Gallery, the Chicago Cultural Center, and most recently at their solo exhibition at Mindy Solomon. They have participated in the ACRE residency and are a recipient of the LuminArts Visual arts Fellowship. They hold a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.