Sara Chinchilla was at work in a salon on Jefferson Boulevard when she looked out the window and spotted giant pink concrete letters rolling down the street.
They spelled “dignidad,” the Spanish word for dignity, and they were hauled on the flatbed of a semi truck that parked at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center.
“The word is in Spanish, right?” Chinchilla said that caught her attention. “I'm happy to see that kind of art. ... In a world that we [Latinos] receive so much hate, and you can see that word—it means a lot to me. You can see [the goosebumps on] my skin.”
“Dignidad” is a sculpture created by artist Iván Argote, curator Carla Acevedo-Yates and a Chicago arts collective called Floating Museum. The piece is a companion to a new exhibition at Dallas Contemporary called “Iván Argote: How to Move a Monument on a Tuesday Morning.”
On Saturday the semi hauled the sculpture from the Dallas Contemporary to the Latino Cultural Center, then the Oak Cliff Cultural Center before parking outside Top Ten Records for a party with DJs and musicians.
Passersby stopped and pulled out their phones to snap photos.
Rosemary Hinojosa is one of the founding board members of the Dallas Mexican American Historical League, which produced the documentary "Nuestro Oak Cliff" that was screened during the day's festivities.
“We worked on the railroads, we worked in hospitality industries. All that is trabajo de dignidad—dignified work, and that should be appreciated, especially now,” Hinojosa said.
"The fact that this sculpture is going through Oak Cliff to the Latino Cultural Center tells me that our people need to see this. We need to see that our dignity is important to this country, to the city."
Ezra Batista, who was born and raised in Oak Cliff, came for a panel discussion related to the project at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center. He was also happy to see the sculpture on Jefferson Boulevard, which he described as “our downtown.”
"I think ‘Dignidad’ really helps us be seen, heard, and valued,” Batista said. “It makes us fill the space with our presence and say, you matter, you belong here, you are powerful, and you are something that is worth fighting for in this world where there's a lot of erasure going on, a lot of intimidation, a lot of oppression."
"Dignidad" debuted in Chicago for the Puerto Rican People’s Day Parade. Dallas is its first destination out of state. It will be parked outside the Contemporary through the fall. Later, it will head to Miami, Washington D.C. and New York City.
A different kind of monument
"Dignidad” is part of a series that reimagines who and what monuments are for by creating sculptures that can move throughout cities and represent people and communities who were rarely, if ever, cast in bronze or carved in stone.
"We see a lot of monuments about men, military men, politicians. I've never seen a monument about an abuela, about a grandmother," said Argote, who lives in Paris but was born in Columbia.
"We were very close to making that monument [of an abuela], and then it was a year ago, after seeing all the aggression towards the Latino community that we said to ourselves that we needed to react in a more frontal, but also celebratory way."
Argote said the word dignidad is direct and needs little explanation. You don’t need to speak Spanish to understand it.
“I think it's the most human value we can have,” he said. It’s important to protect our own dignity and that of others.
“Somehow, nowadays, it feels almost revolutionary to claim our own dignity.”
Details: “Ivan Argote: How to Move a Monument on a Tuesday Morning” opens on Oct. 3 and runs through Jan. 31 at Dallas Contemporary, 161 Glass St., Dallas. General admission is free with a suggested $10 donation. “Dignidad” will be on view outside the Contemporary through the fall.
Got a tip? Email Marcheta Fornoff at mfornoff@kera.org.
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