Orlando City Hall celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month with art exhibit | How to visit:
Exhibit opens at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15
ORLANDO, Fla. —
For 20 years, the city of Orlando has recognized and celebrated one of Central Florida’s biggest populations. As part of this year’s milestone Hispanic Heritage Month celebration, it’s showcasing nearly 30 local Latino and Hispanic artists in a gallery inside City Hall.
Melina Alegría is one of those artists, and she carries her Puerto Rican heritage, as her name suggests, with a lot of joy.
Her piece, called “Las Playas Son Del Pueblo,” brings Puerto Rico’s rich “bomba” dance culture to the forefront. The emblematic skirts of the dancers turned 3D, as she mixed acrylic paint with fabrics on the canvas.
“It is a cultural, folkloric delicacy of my country, really,” Alegría said. “Sometimes we actually do it on the beaches themselves. So part of the beauty of the beaches, aside from the nature, is the culture that lives on them, so I wanted to celebrate that.”
Another Puerto Rican artist, Rafael Delgado, wanted to celebrate the part of Hispanic and Latino culture that focuses on unity.
“It means growing as a family, it means growing as a culture,” he said.
Delgado’s art blends classic figures with a colorful, futuristic theme. It’s the first time his art is on display in an exhibit, made even more special by the timing. He called this one “Collective Strength,” a fitting name for this year’s theme “unidos, somos más,” or “together, we are more.”
“When you see the picture, you see the world on top of all those hands,” he said. “It’s not only here that we’re doing something, you know, we’re doing something that represents us as a Hispanic culture growing not only here in Orlando, but in the rest of the world.”
Peruvian singer, songwriter, and photographer Flavio Sanguinetti chose photos as his medium for the exhibit.
“I tried with these pictures to have people recover this love for the people,” he said. “You take a little bit of my life, their life, and you go home and people enjoy this moment.”
His focus was on the individual stories of people, presented in black and white, and he said it’s an honor to do so.
“I am very excited,” he said. “Today I walked in, I saw city hall, I walked in a circle and I said, ‘Oh my God, I’m so glad.'”
The city will have a public opening ceremony for the exhibit on Sept. 15 at 5 p.m., inside the Terrace Gallery at City Hall. The exhibit will be open until Nov. 5, and it is free to visit.