Summer’s in the air, and as we’re all bursting to bust loose from our COVID confinement, there’s even more giddiness (and apprehension) than usual on the eve of another fabulous season in the fabulous HampTunes.
I’m especially lightheaded because even through my pollen-induced stuffiness I can whiff something particularly special this Memorial Day weekend: a new era of expanded inclusivity in our East End arts scene.
Take, for example, Guild Hall. If you rush to their galleries, you can catch work by two world-class artists … who happen to be Latino.
Puerto Rican-born Enoc Perez’s canvases will swallow you in with their sheer scale and knock you out with their artistry and political impact. Four massive (120 by 90 inches) canvases depict the island’s recent years of devastating domination by nature (two hurricanes, one earthquake, too many aftershocks to enumerate) and to politics (a debt crisis leading to colonial-style receivership). Perez distills it all into two tortured, storm-tossed palm trees set against a decidedly disoriented horizon.
Across the way, you’ll find the more cerebral but no less moving world of Argentine-born Karin Waisman, titled “The Horizon Is Not a Straight Line.” It’s a landscape of liminal spaces — apt for an artist who is multidisciplinary and multi-national — hauntingly rendered in graphite on mylar, and in cast resin and ceramics.
But wait! There’s more!
Friday night, there’s a fiesta under the stars in Guild Hall’s Backyard Theater. Billed as “Latin Moon & Soul,” it’s a co-presentation with OLA that’ll highlight talent from the region and beyond that will make things hot with Latin chill, jazz, boleros and funk.
And even more!
This weekend, Sag Harbor Cinema has its phoenix-from-the-ashes, full-throttled, official launch. I had a chance to tour the facility and, let me tell you, as a filmmaker, not only does it not disappoint, it inspires, with its sophisticated, varying-sized multiplex venues that will allow for daring and polyglot programming under Founding Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. (And, as a bonus, it doesn’t smell anymore!)
This Memorial Day weekend, there’s an accent on Latin American film. It’s part of the Cinema’s revitalized mission as a public-serving institution to reflect the community.
On Sunday afternoon, the Cinema is hosting a free panel on 20 years of Latin American Cinema (full disclosure: I’ll be a panelist). In the evening there will be a screening of the groundbreaking Mexican film “Y Tu Mamá También,” which rocketed the careers of actors Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, and two-time Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón, as well as sparking a golden age of cinema throughout the Americas. All this will be capped by a fiesta on the spanking new panoramic roof deck, with DJ Chile. ¡Chevere!
The holiday weekend of dynamic programming, which reflects the East End’s shifting demographics, is neither sudden nor by coincidence. It’s the direct result of a lot of work, notes Minerva Perez, executive director of OLA, the East End Hispanic arts and advocacy organization that has been toiling for years behind the scenes with various arts venues.
Visit the bilingual websites of Guild Hall or Sag Harbor Cinema to see what I mean. Perez talks about meeting with venues to discuss marketing and outreach, and finding places to break down barriers to access, such as family- and worker-friendly hours and activities, bilingual audio tours and fliers, and targeted programming.
“We want to welcome as many members of the community as we can,” says Josh Gladstone, artistic director of Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater. “More and more, the percentage of the Latino population is growing.”
Indeed, it is. In the last 30 years, East Hampton’s Latino population has more than quadrupled, from 5 percent to 23.7 percent. The future is decidedly diverse, with 48 percent of the student body of East Hampton High School clocking in as Latinx.
As rational players, East End arts organizations recognize that the need to expand their audiences is imperative if they are to remain viable.
But wait, there’s even, even more!
After a summer that awakened us to social justice, there’s also a renewed sense of equity in mission. According to Mr. Gladstone, Guild Hall Executive Director Andrea Grover’s mantra is, “Diversity every day.”
To which I say: Amen.
Over my nearly 30 years on the East End, I have witnessed the growth of our East End Latino population. As a frontline immigrant-receiving community, our mettle’s been tested. We went through the volleyball culture wars in the 1990s, the reactionary talk of “invasions” and its ensuing violence in the 2000s, a rash of Latinx teen suicides in the early 2010s, and then the nativist fervor of Trumpism.
At times I feared we’d veer off course into the morass of racism, or that our youth would feel as alienated as they have in other Suffolk County towns, where MS-13 gang violence found fertile ground. Our wealth, and the resources it could afford, cushioned us, but it was no guarantee. We needed — and continue to need — enlightened leadership.
We may not yet be beyond all that. Each day is a struggle to cohere as a community in formation. But with intentional actions like those taken by our East End arts organizations, we are on our way
And so, this Memorial Day weekend gives us even more of a reason to hoist red, white and blue bunting. As we celebrate those who sacrificed their lives for our freedoms (my Purple Heart dad almost, but thankfully not quite, among them) and our impending freedom from the pandemic, let’s also celebrate the hard work by good people that has brought us to the point where activism meets the arts, and where we can increasingly all see ourselves reflected.
Happy Memorial Día weekend!
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