WaterFire Providence Announces the Opening of Graphic Voices of Latin America

A two-part show: Latin American Posters by Gráfica Latina & La Linterna and PACHA: ancestral evolutions, Murals by Ccopacatty

An exhibition by Gráfica Latina in the Gallery of the WaterFire Arts Center featuring Murals by Ccopacatty in the Main Hall of the WaterFire Arts Center

Mural Exhibition open from Thursday, February 6 – Wednesday, February 26, 2025
PACHA Opening Reception on Thursday, February 6 from 6-8 p.m.

Gallery Space Exhibition will be open from Thursday, February 13 – Sunday, March 23, 2025
Graphic Voices of Latin America, a Joint Exhibition Opening Reception on Thursday, February 13 from 6-8 p.m.

WaterFire Providence announces Graphic Voices of Latin America, a month-long two-part exhibition that features Latin American Posters by Gráfica Latina & La Linterna in the WaterFire Arts Center Gallery and murals by Ccopacatty in the Main Hall of the WaterFire Arts Center opening on Thursday, February 13, 2025, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Both exhibitions are a collective exploration of resistance and resilience by Latin American artists.

“Gráfica Latina is thrilled to showcase the collection at the WaterFire Arts Center’s gallery as it will allow the collection to be available to a wide and diverse community of enthusiasts, students, academics, and professionals, living in Providence and beyond,” says José R. Menéndez and Tatiana Gómez of Buena Gráfica Social Studio.

Graphic Voices of Latin America is part of the research project Gráfica Latina, a digital and mobile poster archive of Latin American and Latinx graphic design. The Latin American Posters have been curated by Gráfica Latina to speak about the social, economic, and political contexts in which these posters were—or/and still are— created from Patagonia to the Andes, Central America, the Caribbean, and North America. The show presents the work by graphic artists and designers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The show represents a diversity of printing techniques, vernacular languages, methods of representation (illustration, typography/calligraphy/lettering, and color), and messaging ranging from cultural to political, and environmental.

Also featured in the Latin American Posters will be posters by La Linterna, a typographic printshop in the city of Cali, Colombia, where street posters have been printed since 1934 using movable type and linocuts, leaving hundreds of walls marked in the main cities of Colombia and a legacy that refuses to disappear. 

Gráfica Latina partnered with Ccopacatty and Rosalee Pike. Ccopcatty is an Indigenous artist of Aymara heritage whose work broadens the collection’s perspective from an Indigenous lens—one that questions topics of identity and the term “Latin American.” His murals, drawings, and sculptures add another dimension to the show while speaking about the presence and influence that Indigenous cultures have had in the continent since pre-Columbian times. Rosalee Pike is a printmaker who will be presenting her book “ANDEAN electric,” an interconnected short-story collection and portrait drawings of 1970s life in the Peruvian Andes.

On view from Thursday, February 6 to Wednesday, February 26, 2025, in the Main Hall is PACHA: ancestral evolutions, Murals by Ccopacatty. “Pacha,” rooted in the Aymara and Quechua cosmology, refers to the concept of time and space as an interconnected whole. It embodies the relationship between the physical world, the spiritual realm, and human existence, offering a profound framework through which to understand Ccopacatty’s large-scale murals. 

“In Aymara logic and language the past is in front of us because it is known and the future is behind us because we haven’t seen it. My work has this same relationship to time and distance, reminding me of my history. My spirit doesn’t forget ancient dimensions and the urgency to connect the future to the past in recording the social drama of a universal humanity, a sometimes forgotten or disregarded humanity, with its own powerful value,” states Ccopacatty.

There will be seven of Ccopacatty’s large-scale murals on display which explore his transition from an Andean boyhood grown to an adult global reaction in images of his inherited Aymara Andean experience as prototypes of humanity. The opening reception will take place on Thursday, February 6 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. with an Indigenous smudging ceremony by Gray Fox, Fire Keeper for the Royal House of the Pokanokets, and performances by artist, culture bearer, conservator, teacher, and community organizer, Aymar Ccopcatty and Irma Alvarez Ccoscco, Quechua poet and linguistic activist. 

“The exhibition by Gráfica Latina & La Linterna is an examination of the power of graphic design and art to motivate and compel precisely such action towards transforming our world. With political posters from 16 countries across South and Central America, the exhibition shares a vibrant range of influences and approaches while capturing the exciting vitality and struggle of recent history,” says Barnaby Evans, Artistic Director and CEO of WaterFire Providence. “We are also excited to share Ccopacatty’s extraordinary and rarely seen artwork with you this month. His stunning, powerful murals demand that we reexamine the complex history of cultural impacts, including the clashes of civilizations and the devastating consequences of ecocide on the natural world. Spanning nearly 500 years of struggle and, from his monumental 97-foot mural “Invasion” to the environmental destruction of the “Exxon Valdez” disaster, Ccopacatty’s work offers a profound and timely call to action.”

The WaterFire Arts Center store + gallery hours are Wednesday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, 10:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. 

Graphic Voices of Latin America has been supported by the WaterFire Arts Center, Northeastern University, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, La Linterna and Fabián Villa, Ccopacatty, Rosalee Pike and Aymar Ccopacatty. Special thanks to Jacob Mitchel, Howie Sneider, Delia Rodríguez-Masjoan, María Cecilia Gaggero and Roberto Gómez, Ryan Dean, and Buena Gráfica Social Studio.