To Be Minnesotane

Banner Image: detail of Between Here and There by Victor Yepez at CLUES St. Paul. Photo taken by Myah Goff.

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The CLUES Latino Art Gallery’s latest exhibit “To Be Minnesotane: Ser y Estar” feels like stepping into a warm family home. 

For instance: the miniature patio. Enclosed by orange brick walls, a chair sits on one side, while an overgrown potted plant spills across the other. Above it, a white sheet hangs from a yellow string, pinned up like laundry left out to dry. But there are no clothes on the line. Instead, photographs of home and family are projected onto the sheet. 

Beneath the patio is a wooden box with instructions from the artist, Ana Keller-Flores: “Place your hand inside.” 

So you do. Your hand sinks into the sand covering the bottom of an otherwise empty space. This installation, titled “La Victoria,” invites you into the act of making a home where there was once nothing. 

That idea runs throughout the exhibit. Keller-Flores is one of 17 local Latine artists exploring the intersections between “ser” and “estar,” two Spanish verbs that both translate to “to be.” 

 

Image: Installation view of La Victoria by Ana Keller-Flores at CLUES St. Paul. Courtesy of the gallery.

“Ser” speaks to who you are. “Estar” speaks to where you are. 

For Victor Yepez, these verbs blur together. In his painting, “Between Here and There,” a young boy holds the moon like a balloon at the end of a string. A long road stretches toward distant mountains, with a river running below him. There’s no clear destination in sight. The boy simply moves through the landscape, suggesting a kind of home that travels with you. 

Roberto Rios roots home more firmly in place. His collage, “El Pueblo Unido,” (The People United), brings together sites of Latine culture across the Twin Cities, including the radio station El Rey, the marketplace Mercado Central, and the restaurants El Burrito Mercado and Taco Taxi. 

Home can also be light enough to lift off the ground. In Kenneth Antonio Rivera’s “I Am Migration,” a father carries his daughter on his back as butterfly wings unfurl from her back.

 

Images: (Above) I am Migration by Kenneth Antonio Rivera on view at CLUES St. Paul. Photo courtesy of the gallery. (Bellow) Who Makes America by Jc Landi at CLUES St. Paul. Photo taken by Myah Goff. 

JC Landi’s “Who Makes America” places a working-class Ecuadorian immigrant inside an American flag, which is pieced together from scraps of fabric. The flag becomes a home, but a complicated one. 

The piece was inspired by her Ecuadorian immigrant father, who has spent more than 30 years working labor-intensive jobs, from baker and dishwasher to landscaper and janitor. 

“At a time when immigrants and immigration have again become subjects of heightened public hostility and exclusion, I found myself asking, who gets to say who belongs?” Landi said. 

For Landi, being “Minnesotane” means honoring Indigenous histories, recognizing migration as a fundamental human act and celebrating a community that mobilizes and shares resources. 

“Of all the ways my parents' decision to immigrate could have played out, I am grateful for the version of my life in which my father eventually made his way to Minnesota,” Landi said. “For me, being ‘Minnesotane’ means the resilience of my community.”

For Irving Vazquez, home lives in music.

His work in the exhibit celebrates Latin rock through concert posters inspired by Indigenous and Mesoamerican art. One poster, created for the Mexican rock band Caifanes, glows in neon blue and pink with two Xoloitzcuintli dogs dancing — a breed associated with ancient Mexico. 

 

Image: Caifanes by Irving Vazquez on view at CLUES St. Paul. Photo courtesy of the gallery

“When I saw it, it immediately made me think of one of my favorite Caifanes songs and of the imagery and mythology that have always surrounded their music,” Vazquez said. 

Another poster, “Rockeros en MN” features an Aztec-inspired figure flashing the rock ‘n’ roll hand sign. A Jaguar helmet stretches across its face, its mouth frozen in a wide-open roar. Beneath the helmet, though, the figure looks completely at peace, sitting cross-legged as if meditating to the rhythm of rock music. 

“Music is the bridge where, even though we are different, we can find one another,’” Vazquez said, quoting singer Rocco Pachukote. “My goal is to create work for touring bands and local musicians that helps give the Latin rock movement in Minnesota a visual language of its own.”

“Being ‘Minnesotane’ means being part of a community while still bringing your own history, culture, and identity into it,” Vazquez added. 

For Mikhamik, home is found in the act of reclaiming what once caused harm. Drawing from his experience as a queer, nonbinary Venezuelan immigrant with a Catholic upbringing, he transforms the Virgin Mary and the traditional Latine altar into spaces of queer safety.

 

Image: Detail of Santa María by Mihamik on view at CLUES St. Paul. Photo taken of Myah Goff.

“As a survivor of conversion therapy, I carry the complicated weight of rituals meant to ‘heal’ what was never broken,” Mikhamik said. “This work challenges that violence, and instead turns the gaze back on the institution asking them: Who do you pray for? Who is worthy of salvation, of mourning, of love?”

“What if we prayed the gay to stay?” Mikhamik added. “What if we honored queer lives not as aberrations but as sacred testaments to resilience, love, and transformation?” 

By the time you make your way through the group show, home has stretched far beyond a house. It lives in patios and roads, restaurants and radio stations, concert halls and altars. Sometimes, like Keller-Flores’ handful of sand, it is something you have to build yourself.◼︎ 

“To Be Minnesotane: Ser y Estar” will be on display at CLUES Latino Art Gallery until Nov. 6. The exhibit is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The gallery is located at 797 E. 7th St., St. Paul.