Tucson, AZ—The Southwest Folklife Alliance in partnership with grassroots organizers from Regéneracion invites the public to the grand opening celebration of a new Center for Cultural Organizing offering space for neighborhood gatherings, storytelling, and heritage-based entrepreneurship on Tucson’s historic South 12th Avenue corridor, aka “La Doce.” The celebration marks the transformation of the historic Louis’ Market building into a new resident-led space.

 

The event features artistic installations, guided performances, lion dancers, Chinese chorizo and community processions that honor the layered cultural histories of Tucson’s Southside and the communities who continue to shape it. At the heart of the evening is rasgos asiáticos, a performance installation created by Virginia Grise and a todo dar production’s Talleres for Dreaming in collaboration with artists Tanya Orellana, Daniel Gower, David Arevalo, Joan Osato and Nelda Ruiz. An ongoing project, rasgos asiáticos traces the diasporic journeys and hidden histories of Chinese communities in Mexico and along the US-Mexico border through a hybrid, convivial approach to storytelling that includes site-responsive installations, communal dinners, public talks, and community workshops.

 

Previous rasgos asiáticos installations occupied an abandoned train shed in Houston, Texas and a Chinatown plaza in Los Angeles, California. In Tucson, large cargo boxes placed throughout the former Chinese grocery store creates an immersive environment inviting viewers to contemplate ancestral histories and legacies of migration while collectively dreaming future possibilities for the Center for Cultural Organizing and the neighborhoods of La Doce. Funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas, and the National Performance Network.

 

The launch of the Center for Cultural Organizing builds on more than a decade of community and cultural organizing by Regeneración (formerly Tierra Y Libertad Organization) and the 2018 La Doce Barrio Foodways Project, a community-led research project—in partnership with the City of Tucson, Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, and the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona—that documented heritage foodways practices, illuminated workable models for cultural and economic sustainability, and revealed a need for greater support of community governance.

 

If you go:

What: rasgos asiáticos / Grand Opening of Louis’ Market, Center for Cultural Organizing
When: April 18, 6pm-9pm
Where: The former Louis’ Market, 4009 S. 12th Avenue, Tucson, AZ
The event is free and open to the public. Entries are timed.
Reservations required: https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/mechanical-raven-productions/rasgos-asiaticos-tucson
More info: info@southwestfolklife.org or https://southwestfolklife.org/event/rasgos-asiaticos-grand-opening-of-louis-market

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The Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA) is an affiliate non-profit organization of the University of Arizona in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the official state-designated folk arts partner of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the parent-producing agent of the annual Tucson Meet Yourself Folklife Festival. The organization offers yearlong programs that celebrates and preserves the art, culture, heritage, foodways, and folklife of the borderlands region.

 

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