CHICAGO — Lit & Luz, an annual bilingual festival that celebrates artists based in Mexico City and Chicago, is back in the city this week.
Now in its 10th year, the festival highlights the unique dialogues and collaborations between artists in two countries.
Lit & Luz kicks off Friday and run through Oct. 21. The programs taking place across Chicago and online include dialogues, readings, music, gallery events and exhibitions.
Events include:
- 6 p.m. Friday at Chicago Art Department. 1926 S. Halsted St.: Reencounters/Reencuentros: Opening Night, featuring a reunion exhibition of 14 artists who took part in the festival in previous years
- 2 p.m. Saturday at Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater, 78 E. Washington St., second floor: A keynote address delivered by award-winning author Ana Castillo
- 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio St.: Three bilingual writing workshops led by Mexico-based published authors
- 6:30 p.m. Oct. 21 at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave.: Live Magazine Show, “TEN”, featuring collaborative artworks created by this year’s artist collaboration cohort.
Esteban King, the festival’s visual arts director, has been involved with Lit & Luz since 2018. He said the event is important to him because it speaks to Chicago’s diverse Latin population and brings artists together.
“It’s super interesting because you could think that [Chicago and Mexico City], we’re two different universes,” he said. “But in fact, you see that there are a lot of social issues or daily phenomena in common. It’s been a way also of constructing bridges between two countries, which are neighbors.”
Reaching the decade milestone offers Lit & Luz organizers a chance to reflect on the strides they’ve made so far. King is helping co-curate and celebrate the “incredible” things that happen when past artists have been able to work together.
Outside of the reunion, organizers also selected 12 first-time participants for the annual collaboration cohort. Artists are paired by their visual or literary specialties and their U.S. or Mexico-based locations. Their final pieces are under the theme “TEN”, a play on its English meaning and its Spanish one.
“‘Ten’ in Spanish means I’m giving you something,” King said. “I would say that it’s related to the fact we’re giving not only from the arts, and from all of the artists, but I will say also, an invitation to give something to the world.”
Chicago-based Puerto Rican artist Edra Soto is participating in the festival for the first time this year. Her work over the past decade has focused on her experiences with migration and socioeconomic and cultural oppression.
Her collaboration with poet Adalber Salas Hernández, which will be displayed during the live magazine show, combines her artwork and videography on life inside the home with a poem Hernández crafted. Four actors will read the poem, which will create what Soto describes as a “melody of echoes,” and her collaboration partner introduced clashing Spanish with English throughout as well.
“I care to collaborate. I always feel that the collaboration completes the work,” Soto said. “I’m very excited about this.”
Chilean writer Antonio Díaz Olivia, who is running the writing workshops during the festival, participated last year. The workshops will feature topics including translation, personal essay writing and activating the creative process.
Forging connections with other parts of the world is important for Olivia, who said he believes events like these help highlight the multitudes of experiences people have living in Chicago and open people’s minds up to who counts as “American.”
Olivia said he believes the festival will keep expanding its diversity of perspectives. In recent years, it has featured artists from Chile, Venezuela and Iran.
“The festival is slowly going from being a bilingual festival to being a multilingual festival, which is great because it’s showing that there are these two cultures, these two languages, around these two cities, but there’s also more than that,” he said.
The majority of events are free of charge. Olivia said that those who feel attending might be too much of a financial burden are welcome to email for exceptions.
For more information, visit litluz.org.
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