“A lot of the artists are interested in social issues,” Youngs said. “When art starts to relate to life in a real way, it becomes more intriguing and more instructive.”

A case in point is Marcos Ramirez, whose projected installation, a billboard mimicking a highway sign showing cities the United States has bombarded in the past, the dates, and their distances from Reading, created a furor in the community and generated many letters to the editor when news of it was released by the Reading Eagle.

“He has done projects in Mexico addressing issues like housing and hunger, and a major piece installed at the Tijuana/California border about immigration,” Youngs said. “He is interested in cultural difference and in trying to promote an awareness of a global view of where we are on this planet, and world peace.”

“Sometimes we look at these things in a negative perspective as being anti-American, but I think there’s nothing unhealthy about criticizing things… The messages on social issues in this show are not just about the United States, but about Mexico and about the world. It’s not anti-anything, but pro-raising our consciousness and awareness of issues, and trying to establish a sense of reality in a confusing world.” The work is being displayed in the Freedman Gallery Annex, rather than outdoors as originally planned.

As part of the event, more than 30 artists have visited Reading to create works specifically for the show, many of them in the Annex. “It’s like a big sandbox with all these artists playing in it,” Youngs said.

In early September, a visit to the Annex revealed Agustin Solorzano of Guadalajara, trained as an architect at Iteso University, gluing artificial ivy to a wall to create a mural of a palace garden minus the palace.

“ This event is important for all the artists in Mexico because I’ll meet artists from other cities; it’s an important exchange,” Solorzano said.

“This is a chance for the (non-Mexican) American community to get to know the Mexican community and see what Mexico is in real life — to get away from the cliches of sombreros and tequila.”

– Idalia Bernal, Artist and
Curatorial Consultant

Monica Ashida, curator of the gallery Arena Mexico in Guadalajara, agreed, explaining why she felt it was an important enough event for her to make the trek, along with many gallery owners, to Reading. “I don’t know all the artists,” she said. “It’s a nice opportunity to have contact with them and get to know the ones from Tijuana and Monterrey, for example.”

One of the artists from Monterrey, Pilar de la Fuente, was working a short distance from Solorzano, tracing the outline of a large projection of her small drawing of two figures, their arms linked in a struggle, on a wall.

“This is an opportunity to show what we’re doing in Mexico here, not in New York, but in Reading,” she said. “It’s the biggest collection, and it can show that the work in general is very different from here, but also has parallels. That’s always good to see.”

Many of the artists visiting Reading are creating art that relates to the area. Diego Medina hosted a party for the local Mexican community at El Tapatio bar and restaurant downtown; Luis Miguel Suro created maize-flavored pretzels for the opening of the Freedman Gallery.

A bridge to the local community was one of Albright’s major goals in sponsoring this exhibition, exemplified in the many open-to-the-public events connected with it, and in the collaborations with institutions like the Police Athletic League and the Hispanic Center.

For the Mexican-American community, the benefits are obvious, but local Mexican artist and educator Idalia Bernal, a key member of the committee that produced the exhibition, said: “This is a chance for the (non-Mexican) American community to get to know the Mexican community and see what Mexico is in real life — to get away from the cliches of sombreros and tequila.”