Street Art as a Cultural Mirror: Art’s Social Meaning in Little Village and Pilsen

A Recognition of Culture

A picture is worth a thousand words is a saying that encompasses the true significance of the value of art. An artist will have a message to convey to his or her audience, and the style and manner in which this message is delivered can vary in medium. This project will focus on street art as an expression and reflection of the ethnic and religious identity — mostly Mexican and Catholic — of the neighborhoods of Little Village and Pilsen in Chicago.

Having grown up on the South Side of Chicago, I have often noticed these murals around me but I never gave their meaning a second thought. I only took in the face value of the mural’s artistry and not the social issues that the art addressed. Nevertheless, now that I am more socially and culturally aware, I wanted to revisit these murals and research how the art reflects the community’s values of religious and ethnic identity.

Street art varies dramatically from place to place but especially in Chicago. These different forms can include but are not limited to murals, graffiti, monuments, and street performances just to name a few. My focus will be on street murals. There are areas in Chicago that have few, if any, displays of street art of any form. Places like Mount Greenwood or Beverly can fall into this category.

The reasons for not displaying art can vary, but one reason could be to attract potential homeowners into the area and therefore keep property prices stable. For example, a family that moves into an area displaying art that contradicts their beliefs can feel hostility and thus create tension in the community. However, in places like Little Village and Pilsen where the community is mostly homogenous in demographics, artists take matters into their own hands by displaying art that resembles the common identity of the neighborhood. Moreover, Little Village and Pilsen differ in their view of identity despite their common Latino heritage. Little Village, for example, was created more by means of the community and therefore its art focuses on the people and their religious and ethnic identity. Much of the art in Pilsen, on the contrary, was created in reaction due to gentrification and therefore has greater resonance with the social issues that face the Latino community. So while Pilsen’s street art does touch on some topics that Little Village addresses, Pilsen focuses on critical social issues ranging from immigration to Latino struggles in America.

The study of street art is invaluable because art is like a cultural mirror that reflects the issues facing the artist and the community at a certain point in time. Studying this art shows the audiences what subjects concern the community most and how the topics are addressed. Art is a cultural object that allows the audience to process the situation more profoundly than if they simply read about the topic from only one point of view. For these reasons, I decided that my focus for my ten-week freshman seminar project would be the study of how street art reflects the ethnic and religious identities of two of the largest Latino communities in Chicago, and how it is a window into understanding the issues that face the Latino community today.

Little Village

The original residents of Little Village consisted primarily of Polish immigrants who were attracted to the jobs created by construction. By the 1950s, a large number of Mexican people moved in and began to transform Little Village into what it is known as today, the “Mexico of the Midwest.” Some of these people who moved into Little Villages were the prior residents of the northern part of Pilsen who forced to relocate after their houses were torn down to make room for the University of Illinois at Chicago (sjom.org 2015). However, Little Village was not as directly affected in such a dramatic manner as how Pilsen was affected. Little Village grew with Latino culture not because Latinos or Latinas were forced to move there as in the case for Pilsen but because a sense of community joined the residents together. The art portrayed on the streets of Little Village annunciates this by focusing on the community’s values in the murals.

I have grown up on the South Side of Chicago for more than ten years of my life. I have visited Little Village on many occasions in the past and I have always noticed the street art when I visited but I never saw anything past the art’s face value. Now, with new skills acquired by taking a visual sociology course, I decided to take another look at the street art with a more analytical eye. I wanted to see if the art could be seen as a cultural mirror that reflected the ethnic and religious identity of the community of Little Village. I wanted to compare the art in Little Village with the art of Pilsen and show how they are both similar and distinct in the manner in which they represent the community. I believe that Little Village focuses more on the community aspect of the neighborhood and therefore focuses on the values most Mexican immigrants have, which tend to include education and religion. On the other hand, Pilsen has had more direct effects from gentrification and historically has served as a port for many undocumented immigrants and therefore its art will focus on political aspects of the struggles Latinos face.

Take the above picture for example. This picture was taken in Little Village and depicts a dedication to the Virgin de Guadalupe with the pictures of loved ones around her and a man praying to her. What is powerful about this depiction is that the mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe shows the presence of Mexicanidad since many Mexicans treasure the Blessed Mother even if they are not Catholic. Also, they portrayed a man as the person praying instead of a women; this surprised me since in my own experience growing up in a Mexican Catholic background, most Latino men are not often thought of as religious, let alone portrayed as prayerful, so this artwork shows a devotion to the Blessed Mother is especially important to the community.

Devotion to La Virgin de Guadalupe could be seen almost everywhere. The above picture shows an entire wall of a restaurant dedicated as a shrine for the moment when the Blessed Mother presents herself to Juan Diego. The Restaurant was a Mexican taco restaurant called El Milagro and again, the art reflected the values of the community which relied heavily on religion.

When I went on a Sunday winter afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to find that people were out and walking around. Having lived in Mexico, the main form of transportation is motorcycling, with walking following close behind. In Little Village there were no motorcycles due to the icy conditions, but there were still many people outside walking and conversing just like in Mexico. I noticed that the demographics were extremely homogenous. I only ever saw one light-skinned family but even they seemed to be of Hispanic descent as they spoke fluent Spanish. I did not see any Caucasian people during my day in Little Village and I found that a bit surprising since Little Village is known for its food and merchandise and I would have expected to at least see a few white customers but found none.

From the picture to the left, one can see, that even merchandise sold at the local market reflects the demands of the customers. Since most of the customers were Latino and most Latino families are raised Catholic or have some devotion to the Virgin de Guadalupe, many products sold at the markets reflect these values. In this picture for example, portraits upon portraits of the Virgin Mary are stacked and ready to be sold as are a collection of different styled rosaries hanging from above.

So as one can see from these previous photographs, religion plays a huge impact on the every day lives of the residents of little village. It is nearly impossible to go down several blocks with out seeing a rosary dangling from a cars rear view mirror or a statue of the Virgin Mary outside of a house. Whether or not the religious object has any religious meaning versus a cultural meaning will be entirely dependent on the person. There are some people I know who have rosaries or who wore them but know not how to use them or never use them to pray. They may not be religious in any way but the rosary still makes them feel connected to their culture. But there are also people who do have rosaries and treasure them for their religious value and may find no cultural value in it.

Not all of the art revolved around religion. Some art focused on the importance of education such as the picture shown above. In it, it states that knowledge is power and it states some other values as well, including family, hope, and unity. This mural reflects on Little Village’s appreciation of education and other familiar values that tie in close to family and community.

What I’ve noticed most about Little Village is that it is predominantly Mexican area that places a large amount of value in its shared culture concerning religion, specifically in the devotion to the Virgin de Guadalupe. Education, family, and unity all are championed by members of this community, for these aspects of culture bring the community closer together and gives a sense of unity. Walking around Little Village, I did feel a sense of community with the rest of the people around me because I felt that we shared very similar backgrounds and very similar cultures. Also, it is important to note that Elaine A. Peña (2011) stated in her book Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe that people could turn an ordinary space into a sacred place. When people rally around a central axis of respect like the Virgin of Guadalupe, a sense of unity spreads throughout the participants. Therefore, the sense of community that I felt and saw came from the manifestation of the the surrounding cultural objects that continuously reminded me that I was around people who shared similar values as mine.

Pilsen

Czech immigrants originally dominated the neighborhood of Pilsen but during the 1970s, a large number of Latino families were forced into Pilsen after a predominantly Mexican area in a part of what is now known as Little Italy was torn down to make room for the University of Illinois at Chicago. Presently, Pilsen is also a major port for undocumented immigrants (sjom.org 2015). This combination of social and political forces impacting the community, such as gentrification and immigration laws allowed Pilsen to revolve more around the issues that affect Latinos today.

The first difference you will notice between Little Village and Pilsen is that Pilsen does not focus as much on religion but rather on topics that promote political discussion. As Caitlin Bruce (2014) states in the abstract of her dissertation: “At a time when cities are increasingly designed to be smooth, friction-free consensual realms for commerce, street art can interject texture, roughness, and productive disagreement, even when they fail on more conventional terms.” The art in Pilsen allows the public space to shed light on the social situations that affect Latino communities today.

In the picture above, a discussion about immigration reform can be brought up and discussed publicly, and while this may bring tension in some arguments, it has the same opportunity to enlighten another person about a topic that they may otherwise never have discussed with someone else. This art also reflects on the demographics of Pilsen. unlike Little Village, there were a few Caucasian people walking in the streets but the majority were again lower class Latino people. The mural was painted by a group of young artists led by Salvador Jimenez (artpilsen.blogspot.com 2009) as a dedication to the immigrant families and allies who have worked for immigration reforms. It is important to note here that the use of Wendy Griswold’s (2003) cultural diamond is important to keep in my mind while looking at street murals. The creator may view a cultural object in a certain way and portray it as such to the audience. The audience then places a certain value on that cultural object based on the values of the social world that they live in that point in time. So for the above mural, while the artist may portray it in one matter, new social events may cause the audience to view it differently than if they were to have seen it five years ago.

Little Village and Pilsen are both known for historically harboring a large amount of Chicago Gangs, and with that there tends to be a lot of violence ensuing due to gang rivalries. This mural above focuses on the social issue where the community wants peace and wants the gangs to put down their guns.

Again, La Virgin de Guadalupe makes an appearance, but this mural is a collection of all of the hopes and dreams of Latino communities. It celebrates the new graduate, the doctor, as well as the everyday worker. It shows the value it has in each of the people that comprises the Latino community and promotes the community to work towards something successful, and includes the Virgin Mary as an advocate for the endeavors undertaken by the Latino community’s younger generation. This artwork was made by Jeff Zimmerman in 2001. Zimmerman is a Chicago native who created the murals in dedication to the Virgin de Guadalupe, the workers of the Latino community, and the future Latino leaders (thepilsenproject.blogspot.com 2012)

Again, the art in Pilsen not only reflects the concerns and values of the community but it provides a platform on which discussion can take place about the social topics that affects the community today. In the mural above, the discussion might revolve around how there are children who face hunger, homeless people who need care, or how poverty and unemployment have affected families across the nation.

The photograph above is truly a very good discussion starter because different people can take away different meanings from this photograph. For example, some might view it as how imprisonment affects families because it causes the other parent to work longer and therefore be away from home longer as well. This could lead the unattended children to join in wrongful acts which will further break up the family. Or one can view it as how families are affected when they are split up during the process of immigrating illegally, as in the left part of the mural where the mother and her children are running through a barrier.

Griswold (2013:105) states in her book, Culture and Societies in a Changing World, that “…the existence of a ‘problem’ implies the existence of a ‘solution.’” This suggests that audience determines what a problem is and what the solution will be. However, there must be a spark to start the discussion about the existence of a problem, and murals do just that. They remind people of the issues we face today, of the culture we value, and raises the question of how to address the problem with a solution.

Real World Implications

The murals tended to not have the artist’s name but for those that I did find the artist, the artist tended to be either Latino or a native Chicagoan, which further solidifies their ethos as an artist painting about cultural situations that are specific to the Latino community in Chicago. One can use street art to discuss issues facing a certain community in the social world. Art can even be used to spark social movements to better resolve these issues. With recent issues, photography can spread through the social web faster than ever before due to advances in social media and technology. Photography is a style of art that can evoke the emotions of the masses and thus call to mind the social issues that we face today. Applications of such art first started off with murals because murals were more public when cellphones were not yet popular. My study shows that although we now have better forms of bringing up social topics, street murals are a great way to not only learn about a certain community’s cultural values, but they also provide a base on which discussion can be built and expanded upon. If I had more time, I would have seen if there are cultural or social issues that are addressed inside the churches of Latino communities. Some churches help lead marches for immigration reforms and studying how the church takes a standpoint in the matter would have been related to how how public institutions affect social matters.

Resources

Griswold, Wendy. 2013. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Peña, A. Elaine. 2011. Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe. California: University of California Press

Bruce, Caitlin F. 2014. “Transitional Art, Transnational Murmurs: Post-Revolutionary Urban Street Art.” Order No. 3626446 dissertation, Northwestern University, Ann Arbor (http://search.proquest.com/docview/1558126616?accountid=12861).

“The Declaration of Immigration Mural.” Art Pilsen, August5, 2009. Retrieved March 16, 2015 (http://artpilsen.blogspot.com/2009/08/declaration-of-immigration-mural.html)

“Increíbles Las Cosas Q’ Se Ven.” The Pilsen Project, February 12, 2012. Retrieved March 16, 2015 (http://thepilsenproject.blogspot.com/2012/02/pilsen-murals-increibles-las-cosas-q-se.html)

“The History of Pilsen and Little Village.” San Jose Obrero Mission, 2015. Retrieved March 16, 2015 (http://www.sjom.org/About-us/PILSEN-HISTORY/index.html)