Yocelyn Riojas: 2nd Art Piece
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"Black & Brown/Unido Podemos" artwork by Yocelyn Riojas
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2019-12-15T20:31:09-08:00
In Riojas’s second artwork, there are many people with even more distinctions between them. One aspect of the image that unites these individuals is their background, a yellow which I believe means brightness and optimism. This meaning can be seen through the positive signs across facial expressions and body language. For starters, everyone is smiling, which is associated with happiness. One individual, who is foremost in the art, is holding up a fist. This is commonly recognized as a sign of solidarity within marginalized communities, including the Latinx community, and is reinforced by their t-shirt that says “Black Lives Matter” or the name of an activist cause to end police brutality against Black bodies. The various skin colors of each individual encapsulates the various racial and ethnic identities of people within the Latinx community. Riojas does not identify any one type of person as Latinx and this is consistent with the community’s ability to intertwine people from various Latin American countries. There are also people of different ages and apparent genders, as well as people who are more androgynous, which speaks to the limitless identities that people may hold in addition to their Latinx one.
Other identities that help people to build relationships are present in this Riojas piece. There are young, smaller people with larger ones. These pairings are symbolic of parents and children together as well as grandparents and grandchildren. This expresses the importance of family to a Latinx person and to their survival in harsh U.S. conditions. Such relationships and their displays of affection further this artist’s communication of unity and togetherness, two vital components of the Latinx experience.
Moving on to symbols in this art, the three primary motifs are butterflies, flowers, and a heart shape that the individuals make together. These butterflies, like the “Black Lives Matter” phrase, are used to represent activism in the Latinx community. Each butterfly is symbolically a Dreamer, or a person who immigrated to the U.S. at a young age and wants to pursue citizenship. Many Dreamers are Latinx, as are supporters of ending police brutality, and this artist aims to capture the activist spirit as well as salient identities of the Latinx community’s members. Likewise, the flowers that frame the individuals contribute to its Latinx nature, as floral designs are reminiscent of tropical beauty, much like the environments of most Latin American countries. As each individual flower evokes natural beauty, together it also wraps the people up into a heart shape. Connecting back to the butterflies, these flowers or a person’s homeland feed them as can be seen by the butterflies resting on the flowers. However, there are also flowers closer to the top of the work and in the air, to remind the viewer that our butterflies who have matured from caterpillars, the young Latinx people who have grown up, move beyond the countries that they are ancestrally tied to in search of more freedom. The heart symbol is one of love, though it is also one of strength. The heart is what pumps blood through the body and keeps it alive, similar to how each Latinx person contributes to the maintenance of the Latinx community, both by surviving and thriving. Each individual perseveres for themselves and their family, as seen by the loving interactions, but are also a part of this larger heart that fuels their ambition and will to remain in the U.S. despite struggles there.
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