arte voz

speak your story / cuenta tu historia

ARTE VOZ creates a site for the exchange of stories and heartbeats elicited by the art of Central America. It’s a relational piece by Muriel Hasbun that began as a series of workshops around Washington, DC (home to 500,000 Salvadorans). Responding to the Laberinto Projects archive of Central American art, individuals learn about the civil war years through its art and engage in the unfinished business of healing from the violence that still engulfs communities today. Encouraging the telling of previously untold stories, what started as a small pre-fabricated audio booth became a transnational sculpture fashioned in collaboration with Salvadoran artist Baltasar Portillo. The audio booth reflects the spherical design of Casa Laberinto's entrance and the Nicaraguan artist Julio Sequeira’s self-portrait “Hombre Cósmico.”

The simultaneous 2016 exhibitions at the American University Museum in Washington, D.C. and at the Centro Cultural de España in San Salvador were a launching point for the creation of a transnational, collective archive of stories and heartbeats to be continued in cities with large numbers of Central Americans in the U.S. as well as with communities in El Salvador. The resulting audio piece will be exhibited with the artworks themselves, providing an embodied reading of art history and a first-person narrative of a population that, in spite of its growing numbers, remains largely invisible --or vilified-- and culturally unknown in the United States.  In the future, a complementary book and website would document the project as well.    

Laberinto Projects is committed to supporting spaces for empowerment and healing, where first person narratives construct and affirm collective history and culture, and galvanize communities with a sense of identity. As communities tell their story, invisibility gives way to repair, while also charting a path for identifying the stressors that ignite violence and prompt migration.