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Spotlight: A place to call home (2023)Acrylic on wall
300" x 216" La Peña, Berkeley, CA This mural was painted by Lauryn Marshall, Angie Lopez, and Kahalla through a collective storytelling and visual language design process led by Cece Carpio. The theme, "a culture of Belonging", is reflected through multiple microcosms of transformation, change, and interconnectivity. In the left hemisphere, a young Indigenous trans person descends from a lineage of spirits, including Xilonen, the Aztec Goddess of Maize, who can be seen emerging from an ear of tender corn. Among her are figures raising fists and signs that represent those organizing in advocacy of Ethnic studies and the preservation of ancestral histories. On the right, the mountains come alive as an intergenerational gathering of matriarchs whose cornrows stretch into braids of sweetgrass embedded with seeds begin to intertwine with sacred waterways. In the center, a tree of life glows with energies that mirror the astrological bodies in the night sky, as a long figure sits, pondering their place among them from their position on Earth. At the top of the mural, the faces of the sun and moon shine down lovingly, gathering the land and all its life in their celestial arms. |