A new exhibit showcasing the talents of Latina artists brings the spirits of women who inhabit the metaphysical world into our reality.
With spooky season just around the corner, Modesto’s McHenry Museum is welcoming the free art exhibit, “¡MONSTRAS! Female Legends of Latin America.”
This exhibit features 28 local artists and their pieces interpreting Latin American female folklore and monster stories. The exhibit focuses on 10 Latin American “Monstra” stories, ranging from interpretations of La Llorona, Santa Muerte, La Pisadeira and many more, along with 14 other interpretations of folklore from other parts of the world.
The traveling exhibit is part of Exhibit Envoy in partnership with the popular podcast, “Monstras,” by Brenda Salguero and Orquidea Morales. On each episode they explore the world of Latin American and Latinx folklore, horror, death, and of course monsters.
At the museum’s launch celebration event on Thursday, Brenda Salguero expressed her joy of having the exhibit be featured at the McHenry Museum. She was excited to invite Central Valley Latino folks who may not normally go to their local museums. She explained it is important for that community to experience the exhibit and the stories it features.
“These stories are really important to our community because they highlight women. They highlight the horror that we go through, right? But also, I just love to try to understand our society and our fears through these monsters,” Salguero said.
One of the local artists featured, 38-year-old Jennifer Hidalgo, was excited to find a space to flex her creative muscles and get in touch with her culture as a Mexican woman. Hidalgo chose to highlight the more niche story of Aichopopo, an Aztec myth about a witch who can transform into a turkey, sometimes halfway between human and bird, who steals the souls of men.
Hidalgo chose to interpret her piece into a multimedia, self portrait, utilizing acrylic, wood, and paper mache to create the three dimensional art.
“I love surrealism — very realistic but also very dreamlike. That’s always been my style,” Hidalgo said. “I love horror, I love the stories, and I love my culture. Keeping my culture alive is really important to me.”
Alyssa Sarmiento, a 23 year-old Modesto artist, echoed similar sentiments to Hidalgo. She decided to participate in the exhibit because she felt disconnected from her own culture as a Mexican woman, and wanted to rediscover her roots. Sarmiento decided to focus on the story of Tlahuelpuchi, a vampire witch said to target infants and children, sensing them from a distance and slipping into homes at night after transforming into an animal.
Sarmiento said she chose this story because she found it interesting how this story was used as a way to explain sudden infant death, and how these stories can help women cope and work through traumatic experiences.
“It connects with me how we use legends to comfort ourselves and find an explanation for things we don’t understand,” Sarmineto said.
Though this exhibit mostly focused on Latin American folklore, it also featured art on female monster stories from different parts of the world. Melanie King, another local Modesto artist, submitted her silkscreen piece interpreting the Japanese folklore story of Yama-uba. Yama-uba (also called Yamamba or Yamanba) is a yōkai from Japanese folklore depicting a mountain-dwelling old woman who lures travelers, especially lost ones, to her remote hut with false hospitality before killing and devouring them. She often shapeshifts or has a hidden mouth on the back of her head to help her eat her prey.
King chose this folklore because the underlying theme of the story resonated with her. It describes Yama-uba as a very intuitive and free-spirited woman connected to nature – a person who gave up her freedom and sense of self to live a domestic married life that ultimately ends with her demise.
“For me, Yama-uba was a way of connecting through folklore to learn about my past and it was about reconnecting to women’s intuition,” King said. “The story mirrors other stories from different cultures about reclaiming your intuition as a woman and it reminded me that no one else is going to tell me what to do. I’m going to make my own decisions for myself.”
The exhibit will run at the McHenry Museum until Oct. 4, before it moves to its next location in Fallon, Nevada. Jessica Flores, the Cultural Services Program Manager for the McHenry Museum, said she booked this exhibit two years in advance and is ecstatic with the outcome of the art and the community reception.
“It’s so much fun to see these legends brought to life in such a creative way, and then getting to listen to the podcast and hear their feminist perspectives on the women — why is it the women that are turned into monsters when most of them are murdered by men?” Flores asked.
”From the beginning, we knew we wanted this exhibition to be more than something we simply brought into the museum. We wanted it to become a conversation with our community.”
