The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

Topic 4B: Emerging Leaders in the Arts:
The Vision of Young Leaders and Artists/
Creating a Life Balance
Reinoza Presentation
Tatiana Reinoza: Well, let me tell you a little
bit about myself. I am Tatiana. I was born in
El Salvador, and I came to the United States
when I was six, where I learned English in
a Greek neighborhood in Queens. For my
presentation, I was assigned the topic of the
vision of young leaders and creating a life
balance within that. I am going to frame my
presentation using my personal experience, my
curatorial work, and also my work as an artist.
My vision and goals are somewhat personal
for me. What I want to concentrate on at
this point in my career is the promotion of
contemporary Latino arts that advocate social
responsibility. The vision behind that approach
is to expand and document the contributions
of Latino artists in the United States. My goals
are to curate and document exhibitions, write
and publish information about the artists, and
encourage artists’ professional development.
So, why curate? Well, curating is an opportunity
to bring together artists of different
disciplines to discuss topics of importance to
our community. Today, there are few curators
who are representing Latino artists in the
United States. Curating involves making art
history, and that is very important. Curating
also encourages dialogue, interaction, and
community education concerning art.
I am going to talk about two curatorial
projects in which I was engaged. The first
project occurred last summer at La Raza
Galeria Posada in Sacramento. The name
of the show was Xihuat. Xihuat is a Nahuatl
word that means “woman of creation” in
the Aztec Nahuatl language—one of the
languages that was spoken in El Salvador. In
that country, four Indigenous languages are
spoken. So, for this show, we put out a call to
artists, I set up a review panel, and we selected
about 15 artists to be part of the exhibition.
One of the issues I wanted to tackle with this
show is that the community I have worked with
is very much a Chicano-centric community.
This is the case because, in Sacramento, there
hasn’t been a huge influx of immigrants from
various countries in Central and South America.
I wanted to show the Sacramento community
that there are many different voices within our
Latino voice and that we are not a monolithic
culture. So we were able to feature Salvadoran
artists, Columbian artists, Argentines, Chicanas,
Puerto Ricans, and that was one of my goals.
I want to talk about cultural pluralism and
creating a balance in the arts. Pluralism is very
important when we speak about multiculturalism
because there used to be that concept of
the melting pot—the concept that we were
all going to become a single homogenous
culture. That hasn’t been the case at all. In
fact, anthropologists say that the world is more
different now than it was 20 or 25 years ago.
One thing I want to mention, though, is that
there are different interpretations of what pluralism
is and what multiculturalism is. There are
different approaches to these concepts that I
have observed within my community. There is
that definition of multiculturalism where we all
exist as different autonomous groups, but we
are segregated. So there is the Latino cultural
center, there is the Asian art gallery. Another
approach has been to bring people from these
different areas and actually have them work
on issues that relate to the entire community. I
think that my generation—I am talking about
18-to-30 year olds—is very much interested in
art that supersedes national, racial, and ethnic
boundaries. This is the case because we are
part of a global network now, and we have
developed complex identities. But we are
all part of a global, visual culture. That is the
long-term goal I would like to work for—for all
of us to see each other in the global picture.
However, at the same time, I struggle with that
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