Sandra Andino

Through an audio-photo documentary project, entitled What it means to be Afro-Latino in Philadelphia: Stories from El Barrio, Sandra will explore Afro-Latino identity, race, and racism in Philadelphia. Seeking to fill a void in Afro-Latino representation, the collaborative series will feature seven large-scale black and white digital portraits and accompanying interviews that will describe the struggle to assert Afro-Latino identity and the racial prejudice and conflicts experienced both inside and outside their communities. Yet, these conversations will also express the subject’s resiliency and pride in their African heritage and ancestry. As a supplementary component, Sandra will lead workshops and engage youth in a dialogue about racial/ethic identity, racism, and cultural pride.

Sandra will create a photo-documentary project that will explore the Afro-Latino concept, experience, and artistic/cultural expression of Latinos in North Philadelphia. She will select a group of Latino visual artists, performers, and cultural workers from youth to seniors and create a series of portraits that will represent them and how they define the Afro-Latino concept. Each piece will be accompanied with text extracted from conversations with each of the artists regarding this topic. These portraits will be put on exhibition and open to the general public, community residents, and families of the individuals portrayed in the project. Her goal is to create social awareness and a collective conscience that Latinos and Latinas have a connection to Africa and African culture(s) in the Diaspora.

Sandra will photograph the women of Grupo Motivos, a collective of Puerto Rican seniors living and working in El Barrio of North Philadelphia. She will document the struggles, success, and creativity of the women at the Las Parcelas, a parcel of land in El Barrio in which they have recreated traditional island culture, including an old-fashioned working kitchen and a garden in which they grow food and herbs for healing. Sandra views this as a way to document the important cultural work women perform that she was not able to photograph as a young woman growing up in Puerto Rico. This is an opportunity to teach and illustrate Latino history through photographs and stories told by the women of Grupo Motivo, sharing their work to beautify the community through horticulture and preserving traditional Puerto Rican culinary practices. The resulting exhibit will raise public awareness of women's work in feeding the soul of their families, neighborhoods, and communities, as well as motivate younger Latinos to continue these traditions. The women of Grupo Motivo will present a series of talks and workshops alongside the photography exhibit.