Twenty years ago, as a young artist in Utah, Ruby Chacón said she had difficulty finding art in galleries that spoke of her heritage and experiences.
“I had to go to other places — like New Mexico, California, and different places like that — to see artwork that reflected me, or just to see anything that reflected my own culture,” Chacón said.
Not seeing gallery spaces like that led her and fellow artist/activist Terry Hurst to create the Mestizo Institute of Culture & Arts, which today is a nonprofit that describes itself as a “grassroots cultural organization dedicated to arts, justice, belonging, and community power.”
MICA is in the process of moving into a new gallery space — at 95 S. Rio Grande St., in Salt Lake City’s The Gateway (next door to Discovery Gateway). The gallery space is scheduled to open with a private event, Saturday, Oct. 21.
Tickets are free for the event, from 7 to 10 p.m., for those who RSVP at mestizoroots.givesmart.com. People who purchase VIP tickets, for $25, can get access at 6 p.m.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Horacia Rodriguez, left, and Bianca Velasquez, board members for the Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts, stand outside their new gallery space at The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City on Friday Oct. 6, 2023.
As preparations for the space were being made in early October — tarps on the floor, ladders perched here and there — Bianca Velasquez, MICA’s vice-chair, called it “very much a work in progress.” One installation, by artist Mao Barroteran, is already up in one of the front windows.
The gallery will open with a retrospective exhibition, “Roots of Resistance,” which will feature work from nearly 30 artists, including those who have worked with MICA before, along with new artists. The gallery will also have a gift shop, featuring work from local artisans and crafters; Velasquez said 10 artists have signed up so far.
Horacio Rodriguez, a local artist and member of MICA’s board, said they were looking to rent space at The Gateway for MICA’s anniversary event, when they found the gallery space.
“We really wanted to highlight some of the local artists who are making work here in the community and have it just be specifically local artists, so people can come in and see their work and purchase [it],” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez called the event “a big salon-style show,” which is “going to be a celebration and an art auction” to support the gallery. Artists are donating their work, and will be present at the opening; VIP ticket buyers will get early access to speak with them.
The event also will include the presentation of this year’s Ruby Chacón Social Justice Arts Award, given to someone in the Salt Lake Valley who is “advancing justice and equity in our communities through the arts.”
How it started
Chacón said she and Hurst launched Mestizo Gallery in 2003, originally as a for-profit coffee house with a gallery space added.
Part of the reason for starting the gallery, she said, was “feeling invisible in Utah.”
She cited one example of a personal tragedy where “I … found my voice as an artist”: The violent 1996 death of her 3-year-old nephew.
“The way the stories were written about us and my nephew, the circumstances surrounding his death, were really very horrific, and it really stereotypes the community,” Chacón said. (In 2003, Chacón told The Tribune that she felt the news media then never humanized her nephew.)
Chacón said experiences like that — as well as being the first member of her family to graduate from high school and go to college — led her to reflect on who she is, the importance of having her experiences validated, and what that means for her work.
“If we were going to change the story, the narrative about ourselves, we had to be the ones to tell those stories through our art,” she said.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Bianca Velasquez, the vice-chair of the board for the Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts, speaks about the upcoming gallery opening in the organization’s new gallery space at The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City on Friday Oct. 6, 2023.
Where it’s going
Chacón moved away from Utah 10 years ago, and now lives in Sacramento, Calif. She’s still keeping tabs on the organization she started, and the Utah arts community.
The number and diversity of art spaces has grown in Utah, Chacón said, so that part of MICA’s mission has been a success. But there are other goals still to be accomplished.
“We did a lot of work on mentoring young artists of color,” she said, “but as far as social change, that’s always something that’s going to be needed, for artists to be able to have a voice [in the] political aspects of changing the community.”
Chacón said she can’t predict how far MICA will go in the next 20 years.
“There are people that are carrying on the mission,” Chacón said. “It’s not about me or what I started. It’s because it’s a real need in the communities, and that’s why people are leading it into the future.”
Rodriguez said that in 2018, the year he joined the board, there was a difference in ideas between the coffee shop and the gallery, so the two entities split. The MICA gallery moved to Sugar Space Arts Warehouse, where it resided until the move to The Gateway. (The coffee shop, at 631 W. North Temple, is still serving lattes.)
The MICA board is in the process of rebuilding, Rodriguez said. One question they briefly wrestled with was whether to change the name by which they have been known for two decades.
“A big motivation behind the name, too, is to reclaim that term,” Velasquez said. “Mestizo,” she said, is a term that means “a mix between Indigenous folks and the colonizers.” In Central and South America, she said, the term can have a negative connotation, but in the United States, people “have worked hard to reclaim it and be proud of it.”
Velasquez said watching the community response to the new gallery space has been “rejuvenating” — seeing such artists as Andrew Alba, who have come through MICA and gone on to success in the art world.
The gallery aims to curate shows every six to eight weeks, featuring local artists — and the window art installation will be paired with those exhibitions. Other plans include hosting artist workships, establishing studio space and, eventually, having an artist in residence.
“If we want to keep Mestizo going, the future is going to definitely have to be younger people,” Rodriguez said.
“It’s 20 years, we’re re-invigorating [MICA]. We’re bringing new blood into it,” Velasquez said. “But, also, we’re still honoring the roots [that] were built on Ruby’s insistence on resisting against the status quo. … It is kind of a full-circle moment.”
