KINGSVILLE, Tx — On Dia de los Muertos, we remember those who have passed through ofrendas and even festivals. But one Texas A&M University-Kingsville student is remembering a Mexican folklore legend with her skills as a sculptor.
It’s through a different lens that senior art major Angelica Cantu said you’ll start to see things from a different perspective.
“You have to feel for these certain things in order to make something,” Cantu said.
Cantu sculpted La Llorona.
“There’s this beautiful woman. She falls in love with this wealthy man, and they have two kids. He was unfaithful to her and so in response to that she drowned and murdered her two children and now she wanders, calling out for her children,” Cantu said.
Cantu spent three months over the summer researching and speaking with other South Texas artists as part of her McNair Scholars Project.
“I chose to do mine on la Llorona and how she impacts artists and how it can affect their artistic expression and interpretations of other people’s work and their own,” Cantu said.
Cantu said La Llorona’s story has several different versions in each culture, but they all have the same themes.
“Grief, love, betrayal, the supernatural,” Cantu said.
After speaking with others, she chose to work with 3D models to sculpt the legend.
“I felt more connected to my work when I was working completely with my hands. For the piece with the hands, when I had put them onto the face I started to tear up a bit because I could feel these kids hands. I just remembered her story and felt so sad and ceramics is the only way I could’ve felt that,” Cantu said.
The inspiration she found from other's interpretations of the tale became her outlet.
“This was really good for my mental health. It made me just have an open mind to different cultures by seeing more and reading more. Any women would feel this kind of grief, anger and anguish when a person is unfaithful to them or if they are wronged, betrayed. I think the point is to learn from it. Care for each other, show them, tell them. And I think people can relate to her in that way and the struggles of being this beautiful woman, yet people portray her as this evil being,” Cantu said.
Cantu will join other students at Texas A&M University-Kingsville on Monday, Nov. 4, at 1 p.m. at the university ballrooms to present her artwork and research. The presentation is free and open to the public.
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