What We Carry: Design, Objects, Memory and Belonging between Mexico and Chicago
@ Chicago History Museum
1601 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60614
Opening Saturday, August 22nd, from 2:30PM - 5PM
On view through Sunday, November 8th
Migration is often told through economics or politics, but it is also a story of objects, traditions, and the everyday practices that people carry with them. This conversation explores how Mexican migrants in Chicago preserved and transformed their cultural heritage through material culture, creating spaces of belonging far from home. Rather than focusing solely on family heirlooms, the discussion will examine the broader role of objects, crafts, domestic rituals, and community institutions in sustaining cultural identity. Churches, settlement houses, social clubs, and neighborhood organizations became places where traditions were not only remembered but actively recreated, adapted, and passed on to new generations. In many ways, these spaces functioned as cultural workshops where craft, celebration, food, music, and making offered a counterpoint to the pressures of industrialization and displacement. By placing the experiences of Mexican migrants alongside the project of modernization unfolding in Mexico during the twentieth century, the panel asks how migration reshaped material culture on both sides of the border.
Join Edith Farnsworth House and the Chicago History Museum in highlighting their two exhibitions, Fertile Ground and Aqui en Chicago, with this incredible conversation between Ana Elena Mallet, Tatiana Cuevas Guevara, and Jojo Galván, moderated by Iker Gil of Mas Context. A reception with refreshments will follow in the CHM café.
**NOTE: This event is taking place at the Chicago History Museum at 1601 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60614. Pre-registration recommended. Walk-in registration, space permitting.
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Tags: Ana Elena Mallet, Chicago, Chicago History Museum, Iker Gil, Jojo Galván, Lincoln Park, Memory and Belonging between Mexico and Chicago, Tatiana Cuevas Guevara, What We Carry: Design Objects
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