Asia Fajardo and Tania Maldonado
Audio By Carbonatix
“Pride is every month. It’s not just in June – just like any culture,” says Lucille Rivera, Chicano Humanities and Arts Council vice president and curator, explaining her reasoning for opening an LGBTQ+ Pride exhibit that will close a week into June. Amor Es Amor, presented by CHAC galleries and Northglenn Arts, spotlights artists from Latino and Chicano communities – many of whom are LGBTQ+ – with works about embracing every form of love.
Rivera explains that the show is dedicated to the self-respect, dignity and pride of the LGBTQ+ Latino and Chicano communities through the work of twelve featured artists, including Rivera. She has been a photographer for fifteen years and believes that every piece of art holds a story. Her photographs tell the tale of her granddaughter, who is “a tough person. But when I see her with her baby, she becomes very feminine,” Rivera says. “That’s a side of her that people don’t see.”
The exhibit is well aligned with CHAC’s mission of uplifting marginalized, multiracial groups. Founded in 1978, CHAC is Denver’s oldest Latin nonprofit arts organization and began as a collective of Chicano artists who weren’t allowed to showcase work at other Denver galleries because of discrimination. “CHAC actually started out of this community coming together and saying if they’re not going to let us in their space, we will make our own,” says Tania Maldonado, a queer individual working for CHAC.
Maldonado (who uses they/them pronouns) likens Amor Es Amor to the 1960s Chicano movement, describing how the exhibit revels in the unique narratives, identities and stories of queer individuals. During the Chicano movement, thousands of Mexican-Americans advocated for social and political empowerment; the movement was also closely tied to the intersectionality of unique Mexican-American identities.”The Amor Es Amor show, to me, is like an embodiment of community in reflection and celebration,” Maldonado says. “This show is dedicated to the legacy of radical vulnerability and self-acceptance and intimacy.”
Like Maldonado, Rivera’s passion for the exhibit is entwined with her identity. Her activist work for the LGBTQ+ community stems from her experience as a mother; her son, who is now forty, came out as gay at age sixteen. “I remember when we were in church, the priest told [my son’s] dad that we were going to go to hell for allowing our son to be who he was,” Rivera says. “And so we changed from the Catholic Church. We went to a Christian church and we still had a struggle, but we let our son be who he was.”
Queer teenagers who knew her son came to Rivera for refuge after facing unaccepting parents who tossed them from their homes. “There was a lot of shame, particularly [from] parents, because I experienced that with children coming to my home. … Their parents were not open to it,” she recalls.
Maldonado is all too familiar with the shame Rivera describes witnessing. They grew up in a rural community near Greeley and often felt uncomfortable and unsafe to be their true self. Now Maldonado views their queer existence as an inherent “act of resistance” and is confident in who they are, no longer afraid of the double takes and gawking stares that often follow them. Maldonado found a loving, accepting community in Denver – a space that every queer individual deserves.
“Community is out there, and it’s waiting for you with open arms,” Maldonado says. “Each and every one of us was made to be adored. It’s only up to us to fall in love with our existence and find the people that are also here to uplift you in that.”
As for the exhibit, “queer joy is my priority,” Maldonado says. “And seeing a wall full of that art; that is something that all of the oppressive systems and things we are having to combat can’t take away from us.”
Amor es Amor runs through June 9, from noon to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday at CHAC Gallery, 1560 Teller Street, Lakewood.
