La Peña Gallery in Austin, Texas:
A Site of Latina Art, Politics and Resistance
LA PEÑA GALLERY
Arte y Comunidad
A LATINX INSTITUTION
Since 1981 sisters Lidia and Cynthia Pérez have operated La Peña gallery. Their initial premise was twofold. First, they sought to recreate the South American community gathering called peñas--a festival where communities would come together to consume and produce art. And second, to bring this practice into the “daily life of the community.” In the decades since its founding, La Peña has become a locus of original art and performance in the Austin area. Artists old and young, new and established, and performers across media meet at La Pena in a setting dedicated to Latinx Cultural Expression.
What the corporate big shots can’t understand is, this is a re-creation of our home, our parallel universe. Las Manitas is the bakery, the day care center is the house where we grew up, and the gallery is the creek where we used to run to decompress.
Cynthia Pérez
PRESERVING CULTURAL EXPRESSION
La Peña's mission of Latinx Artivism
Community engagement grounds the efforts of La Peña. In their programming, La Peña includes local artists and supports artistic development and community development. As an umbrella organization with nonprofit status La Peña is able to sponsor and work with other community organizations, including Austin Mural Organization (AMOR) and el Taller de Arte Público. According to the Texas State Historical Association, “In addition to providing funds for these groups, La Peña offers workshops on such issues as effective communication with the media and obtaining funding from the city. It also helps individual artists to install and publicize exhibitions and obtain funding. La Peña's monthly exhibitions offer emerging artists an invaluable opportunity to acquaint the public with their work.”
UNIR A LA GENTE
Gary Cartwright’s article for Texas Monthly “Tex-Mex and the City” demonstrates the cultural value that the Pérez sisters institutions have had in Austin, with a primary focus on the restaurant that originally housed the gallery. A number of other small articles about La Peña emphasize the broad involvement of the community. No singular group dominates the scene of consumers at La Peña even though the gallery is dedicated to demonstrating specifically Latinx art. The gallery unifies,but it is also significant in its breaching of cultural and artistic norms. Many institutions such as La Peña were formed as a sort of protest of white western hegemonic norms. In an article on Mexican American cultural growth in Austin, Esther Sanchez interviewed the Pérez sisters:
“Art is political,” Pérez said. “In a sense where it’s also art activism. The other thing with Nivia’s art, there is a brown woman. That’s what made her trajectories skyrocketing, because we didn’t find those type of reflections in the early ’70s and ’80s. You found them in Mexico, but not on this side.”
La Peña represents a broad cultural mode of expression: it asserts the value of Latinx art and boosts communities simultaneously, combining aesthetics and activism. While only one of many spaces, La Peña demonstrates the successful coexistence of art and activism, not only through their activities as an institution, but because of their history of defiance in the face of big capital and for their continued support of Latinx art and community while investing in the future of their city.