Magazine

During Hispanic Heritage Month, the University honored Latinx culture with what has become a permanent installation in Sykes Student Union: a custom mural by the renowned Chilean artist and activist Alejandro “Mono” González.

Along with his son, Sebastián González, and assistants, González spent the last week of September on campus to install the mural, speak with classes, and lead a printmaking master class with art students. Simultaneously, Mono & Mural, an exhibit of his work, was on display in WCU’s Baker Gallery. He was also the keynote for the University’s 15th annual Latino Communities Conference, talking not only about making art but about public art and its social impact.

Daniela Johannes, originally from Chile, associate professor of languages and cultures, is director for the Latino Communities Conference and is responsible for bringing Gonzalez to WCU for the conference and to create the mural. She notes that September 11, 1973 (“the other 9/11,” she says), was the Chilean coup d’etat and “Gonzalez was part of the movement, painting clandestinely during the dictatorship.”.

In the late 1960s, Gonzalez founded La Brigada Ramona Parra, a street arts informal school and a collective of young painters who left a heritage of visual social messages on the walls and public buildings of Santiago, Chile. During the Chilean dictatorship, several of González’s authored murals were covered with white paint but were later restored and declared national monuments of heritage during the Chilean democracy.

Johannes calls the mural on the second floor of Sykes “an educational monument that honors the heritage” of WCU’s Latinx students and employees.