Ana Guissel Palma

Ana will lead eight workshops for community members at Fleisher Art Memorial, in which they will fabricate moveable sculptures out of paper-mache. People from different backgrounds will get together to engage in personal dialogue while they fabricate their pieces, allowing for independent critical thinking and community interaction. The artifacts created will be displayed in a large procession in South Philadelphia for the el Día de los Muertos / Day of the Dead cultural celebration.

Born in Mexico, Ana Guissel Palma was an artist based in Philadelphia since 1999, originally trained as a muralist since 2002. Ana started art and crafts initiatives aiming to preserve the cultural identities of immigrant groups of Meso American (region and cultural area of parts of Mexico and Central America) descendants, while assimilating the new culture embraced in the Philadelphia area. The art made with the immigrant community has brought them to venues such as the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Museum of Art, UPenn Museum, and The Kimmel Center, among others. 

Ana will lead a community of immigrants to preserve Day of the Dead- a Mexican cultural tradition- and resist its mainstream exploitation using paper-mache. Through eight workshops, participants will research ancient, inherited documents that explain the origins of this celebrated syncretism. Together, with Casa Monarca in South Philadelphia, they will design and produce a colorful procession with the pieces created at these workshops, culminating in an authentic Day of the Dead celebration. 

Ana taught 12 weekly sessions to Mexican community members and others interested in Mesoamerican culture the visual language of ancient pre-Columbian symbolism as a source of inspiration for them to create their own designs. Ana then helped participants transfer these symbols to elements of our modern world, ‘everyday’ items such as clothing, curtains, and banners. Through her teaching how to embroider or paint designs on textiles, her students were able to implement their own concepts on objects of their choice. Ana believed this to be vital to cultural survival and maintaining and passing on traditions.