"Recuerditos Salvaoreños/Salvadoran Memories"

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese hosted guest artist Karla Rodas on Thursday, September 29 for an interactive lecture and workshop on diasporic art in Latin America. Rodas, an American-Salvadoran painter and muralist, explores the recapturing of diasporic memory through her artwork.
 

Works such as Rodas’ “Indigenous Lament” present the difficult negotiations of self, heritage, and homeland in a Latino-American context. Using a warm, bold color palette, Rodas examines the Latino immigrant experience with larger than life murals and other large-scale paintings. A promoter of public engagement in the arts, Rodas is most famously known for her Mama Ayesha's Restaurant Presidential Mural on the side of the historic restaurant Mama Ayesha’s in Adams Morgan, Washington, DC.

Rodas’ workshop brought her passion for the arts to the University of Maryland, where she shared inspiring experiences and advice to students of Spanish and art. “You must do away with the notion of the starving artist. I came from a very humble background – a diet of milk and fruit loops, but what kept me going was a dream,” exclaims Rodas. The workshop section of the evening presented an exercise in re-creating memory through creative production, where participating students painted recuerditos. Small, rectangular paintings, recuerditos reflect personal memories of diaspora and immigration. Rodas encouraged students to consider their paintings as tools for reflection of past nostalgia and future dreams. Rodas remarks, “We are warriors of art and peace. . . . You have to be persistent and tenacious. . . . See yourself or what you wish to become, because you are already that, which you want to become.”