Puerto Rican Pop Illustration To Mexican Cinema Way To Celebrate Hispanic Heritage.

From the salsa beat at dance clubs to award-winning international cinema, the art and culture of the Latino experience is hot, getting hotter, especially during Hispanic Heritage Month.

Schools, museums and community organizations will celebrate with festivals, parades and a variety of educational experiences. No experience is “hotter” than what’s planned at Columbia College Chicago, where Hispanic Heritage Month is being marked with FOCO (Spanish slang for “creativity,” literally “light bulb”), a month-long multi arts festival (Oct. 1-Nov. 7) that showcases Latino and Latin American contemporary pop culture through visual arts, cinema and music.

“Students, staff, faculty and even some members of Columbia’s board of trustees have participated in the planning of FOCO,” says Ana Maria Soto, director of Latino Cultural Affairs at Columbia. “This is the first time we’re doing anything on this scale for Hispanic Heritage Month and it will be one of our major cultural initiatives.”

Some of the featured artists and events at FOCO include the arts of Puerto Rican Pop Illustrator Carlos Aponte and the Mexican Graphic Design Guerilla Collective Hematoma; the music of avant-sensation Superaquello and other electronic bands. Also, Subterraneo Niu Wave, a program of Mexican and Argentinian underground cinema and a film series on macho identity and homoeroticism in Mexican cinema plus an artists’ celebration of Dia de los Muertos.

“Popular culture has the ability to contest stereotypes and to question our notions of identity,” says Carmello Esterrich, professor of Cultural Studies at Columbia and co-organizer of FOCO. “It can also perpetuate these stereotypes and intensify prejudices. What we are trying to do is bring these two sides of Latino and Latin American popular culture together to reveal these contradictions, create a dialogue and come away with some fresh ideas.”

It is not surprising that Columbia College — where the curriculum is all about the arts and media and the posture is aggressively urban, diverse and gritty — would seek to mark Hispanic Heritage Month with events that are consistent with its alternative image. At Columbia, the administration doesn’t just tolerate difference, they glorify it.

According to Mark Kelly, Vice President of Student Affairs, part of the education at Columbia is the enrichment provided by studying and creating with lots of people who are different from the ones you went to high school with — whether that means a different race, age, religion, country of origin or sexual orientation. This, says Kelly, makes for some amazing synergies and enriches students’ art and ultimately the entire society through that art.

“Columbia’s celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month is just one more way we have of expressing our love of diversity.”

FOCO culminates on November 2 with a gala dinner and silent auction. For further information see http://www.focofest.com or call Ana Maria Soto, 312.344.7569.

Skip to content