Raul B. Pizarro
The Tianguis Project
Tianguis is an art project that explores and archives the vibrancy and complexity of border communities through the experiences of vendors at the Maclin Open Air Market in the city of Ontario in Southern California. The project seeks to honor, reframe, and amplify the lives and stories of migrant vendors in the tianguis. Tianguis comes from the Nahuatl language term taianquiztli—translated as marketplace in English or mercado in Spanish. Its legacy is a mix of modern practices and traditional mercantile culture of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, including the influence of bazaars in the Middle East via Spain.
The project spotlights stories of belonging and sharing truths about a space built primarily by immigrants and their families that reflect cultural practices—foods, languages, dialects, and experiences—left behind that they may never return to. Recorded interviews, hand-made portraits, and a community retablo illuminate stories of hope and loss of hope. The portraits are painted on a wooden panel in the shape of a hand to reflect the world vendors create with their hands and labor.
The portraits are about reclaiming dignity, even in places like the swap meet that are not free of prejudice, mistrust, and other challenges. And yet, this physical and dynamic space plays many critical roles in vendors’ lives—from providing opportunities to practice entrepreneurship to being able to provide housing, education, and a future for their families. It is a self-sustaining community developed to meet the needs and wants of a diverse, changing group of people. However, tianguis are disappearing to make way for development. That is why the Tianguis art project archives these nuanced stories, cultures, and struggles before they are gone. Stories of people whose voices are consistently left out of conversations about the US-Mexico border, migration, and the creation of self-sustaining communities.
In Memoriam
Raul Benjamin Pizarro passed on March 18, 2023, before he was able to finish the Tianguis art project. He was not able to complete the retablo or finish the audio editing and production. Family members and friends who were supporting the Tianguis art project followed Raul’s wishes and completed as much of the project as possible.
Contributor Work
Ocean With No Ebb, 2007. Oil on canvas, 33 x 43 in. Courtesy of Raul Pizarro.
Daedalus, 2009. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. Courtesy of Raul Pizarro.
Contributor Profile
Courtesy The Art of Raul Pizarro Photo by Andy McCracken
Raul B. Pizarro (1975-2023) is a self-taught, Queer, Latinx visual artist with muscular dystrophy. Born in Mexicali, Mexico, the third of four siblings, Raul and his family migrated to Southern California—the place that reared him and became home—after the age of three. He grew up in the city of Pomona, CA—a short stroll from Pomona’s artist district.
Raul’s professional work bridges diverse themes and spans over 25 years. Each piece of art emerges from his experience at the intersection of disability, LGBTQ identity, race, ethnicity, family, and community. Raul believes art needs to be reclaimed by our communities and embraced by the formal art world. Among his proudest achievements is Raul’s residency with Self-Help Graphics & Art in Los Angeles, CA. Raul worked with a master printmaker to produce several prints of Sharia—a piece honoring two young men executed in Iran for homosexuality—and half became part of various Latinx collections at national museums and universities. Raul was also one of the artists invited to participate in the singular Los Angeles Community of Angels project, and was featured in Preserving Creative Spaces, a traveling exhibition of 50 photographs of artists and their studios that will become part of the Smithsonian archives. In 2020, Raul Pizarro was honored with a Border Narrative Change grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC).