ROBERT NEITHART, Special to The Denisonian-
Boredom is a rare luxury for most of us. The little rectangles in our pockets provide us with all the entertainment we could ever need to drown out the silence. We are bombarded with ads appearing and disappearing to grab our attention, and if all else fails, we turn to daydreaming. That being said, boredom has become the enemy and we’d better welcome it. For Chicago-based artist Salvador Jiménez-Flores, it was the embrace of boredom, coupled with the exercise of creativity, that would lead to a life devoted to art and advocacy.
Last Friday evening, a large crowd of chattering students, happy children, tired parents, hopeful professors and a few unidentified student journalists filed into the crowded lobby of the Denison Museum, now transformed into a makeshift art studio , complete with linoleum prints. styrofoam blanks, colored paints and a tortilla press to boot.
The tortilla printing workshop is an event that Jiménez-Flores designed in the interest of civic engagement, self-expression, advocacy and artistic education, giving communities the same inspiration from his after-school programs.
The event progressed with students, parents and children mingling around various tables in controlled chaos, taking stock of the prints provided by Jiménez-Flores, many of which centered around themes of resistance and Latin American heritage, and appreciating if they cared to take a stab at their creation, which thankfully many did.
Born in Jalisco, Mexico, Jiménez-Flores credits much of his approach to creating art to his need to be “hands-on and creative” growing up, having to make his own toys and games in instead of those that can be bought.
In the late 1990s, Jiménez-Flores moved to the United States with his family, settling in Chicago, IL, in response to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which allowed his father to have more employment opportunities in the states. .
While in Chicago, Jiménez-Flores enrolled in an after-school photography program, a critical moment in his life, allowing him to express in visual form what he could not verbalize, introducing him to the power transcendent of art.
An important aspect in Jiménez-Flore’s approach to artistic expression is the idea of intentionality. In his work, he avoids creating art for art’s sake. Instead, he aims to “convey a message”, creating works of art with generational appeal whose sentiments and themes continue to remain as relevant as the day they were created, such as ideas of political identity and double consciousness , confronting issues of race, colonialism. , migration, dominant culture and futurism.
When asked why she felt it was meaningful for her students to participate in this event, Spanish and Modern Languages professor Mirela Butnaru stated that she “wanted her students to complement their academic engagement in the classroom with experience practical and real-world”.
Jiménez-Flores’ work is also featured in the Dension Museum’s current exhibition, Be a good neighbor. This exhibit describes transnational relations between the United States and Latin America in the 1930s and 1940s, portraying how the U.S. government sought to “invest in culture as a means not only of making friends with [their] Western allies, but also to influence the public in the country”. The exhibition is complete with prints – one by Jiménez-Flores, illustrations and posters.
The world is a noisy, crowded place that gives us little time to be alone with our thoughts and ideas. Take a chance and dare to get bored with nothing but your creativity to guide you. One can be amazed at what he can achieve, and maybe one day, an artist’s work can be displayed in a museum, just like Jiménez-Flores.
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