Art on the Grounds: Creando Espacio Art Installation (Montalvo Arts Center – Saratoga, CA)
About the Art Installation:
Creando Espacio is a participatory art installation by Bay Area based artist, Hector Dionicio Mendoza in collaboration with Amalia Mesa-Bains, Viviana Paredes, and Steve White.
As a child, Mendoza grew up with a great appreciation for the importance of faith, ritual, and alternative healing traditions as practiced by his grandfather, a fifth-generation curandero (shaman). In Mexico as well as Central and South America, the curandera/o plays an important role to many people embarking on the long and challenging journey to El Norte/The North (the United States), providing blessings and protection before they depart in search of a better way of life. Creando Espacio draws on Mendoza’s childhood memories creating an outdoor dwelling that modernizes his grandfather’s healing space in Mexico.
This installation serves as a participatory and meditative space for the community to reflect on their own memories and experiences of migration, connection, placemaking, and family rituals.
This project was made possible in part by a grant from The Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Capturing Moments 