BareBones 2020 · OFFERINGS: Artists Respond to the Mourning, Grieving and Fires on Lake Street
Gustavo Boada Rivas
De Colores
“This mural portrays the goddess of water who brings life and joy, nurturing future generations through the fruit of the nopal or heart, the heart that through its vibrations bring us colors. Why don’t they have clothes? Because they just got out of the ICE cages.”
photos: Paul Irmiter except where noted.
DeColores is a high relief mural inspired by the anthem of the United Farmworker Movement (UFW) during the marches and strikes in their struggles for social justice. DeColores literally means ‘of many colors’. The song celebrates the incredible beauty of life’s diversity – the multicolored birds, the radiant flowers, and the luminescent rainbow. The chorus says that just as life by its very nature is so colorful, so too great love embraces people of many colors. This song resonates with our Latino soul because we are De Colores. The many colors of humanity are right across the family dinner table. Our diversity is rooted in our mixed racial, cultural, and historical heritage.
For the recent OFFERINGS Live Pop-ups, DeColores had been mounted at Robert’s Annex on Lake St., Oct. 25 to Nov. 7, 2020.
About the Artist
Gustavo Boada Rivas is a theater-based multidisciplinary artist with more than 20 years working in professional Theater in Peru, Chile, Puerto Rico and USA. In 1997-1998, he was invited by Peter Schumman to work in Bread and Puppet Theater. During the summer 1999 he worked with Puerto Rican Puppet Theater ”The world of the puppets”. In 2000 -2003, Gustavo Boada worked in Puppetry in Practice at Brooklyn College. He moved to Philadelphia in June of 2003 to create a non-profit organization to promote social change through the Theater: NAYLAMP Street & Puppet Theater. Since moving to Minneapolis in 2007, he has been working with the Heart of the Beast Theater in Minneapolis as the May Day Parade staff and roster artist as well as performance artist in main stage performances. Also he works with ArtStart in Saint Paul as a Roster Artist and diverse community organizations of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Recently he has been curated for HOBT, Saturday Spanish Puppet shows, a series of 12 different performances to outreach Latino Community of South Minneapolis.
