Dix Park ready to take flight with first international art exhibit ‘Wings of the City’
Dorothea Dix Park is hosting its first international art exhibit — a collection of life-size bronze sculptures with the intent of establishing dialogue and creating community.
“Wings of the City,” known as Alas de la Ciudad in Spanish, is a traveling art exhibit of nine sculptures by Mexican artist Jorge Marín. They were installed this week and will be on display through March. An opening event is Saturday.
“Based on the pictures we’ve seen, Dix Park is an amazing place for the exhibit, thanks to its location and its views of the Raleigh skyline,” said Sandra Benito, a spokesperson for the Jorge Marín Foundation’s office in Mexico City.
“It’s fabulous,” Benito said in a phone interview with The News & Observer.
Benito says that the Foundation is excited to bring a piece of Mexican culture to the Raleigh community. The Foundation partnered with the City of Raleigh and the Consulate General of Mexico in Raleigh to bring the exhibit to Dix Park.
The exhibit includes interactive activities featuring dialogue in the Mexican Indigenous language, Purépecha.
“This exhibit launched in Mexico City in 2010, and it is artist Jorge Marín’s first interactive street exhibit,” Benito said. “It was a turning point for him because he loved the idea of people engaging with his art in public spaces compared to a museum.”
The most popular sculpture is the “Alas de Mexico” sculpture, which features a pair of wings hanging from a frame standing on a concrete surface. Visitors can climb up three steps and appear to be wearing the wings.
Art lovers and local leaders across the globe wanted the pieces to be featured in their own neighborhoods, streets and parks, Benito said. That sparked the beginning of the exhibit’s international journey.
It most recently was in Greenville, S.C.
“Since 2013, the exhibit has traveled more than 6,000 miles across the United States, including states like Texas and California,” Benito said. “Greenville and Raleigh are the exhibit’s latest stops.”
This exhibit is meant to establish dialogue between contemporary Mexican art and the host city. For Marín, the connection between the Purépecha language and literature and his work is fundamental, he says, because it opens the doors to the possibility of generating new stories and imagining other forms of intercultural coexistence.
“This language will not only contribute to the context of my pieces, but also the Purépecha culture will feed back on each one of them,” Marín said in a statement.
Wings of the City at Dix Park
The statues arrived Monday morning. Park crews and contractors helped install them throughout the park, said Lauren Danforth, communications manager for Dorothea Dix Park.
“They are here and ready to go,” she said. “Folks are welcome to come and take a look at them at any time all the way through March.”
The park is hosting an opening event Saturday from 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Danforth says the event will be an opportunity to celebrate Latino Heritage Month, which ends Oct. 15, and Mexican culture with live music, food trucks, and family-friendly activities related to the sculptures and Purépecha history.
One of the largest migrant populations in Raleigh has roots in the Purépecha culture, according to the Jorge Marín Foundation. The epicenter of the Purépecha has long been the current state of Michoacán, located in central-west Mexico.
“Our goal is kind of bringing everyone together and building community,” Danforth said.
For more on the artist, a map of the sculptures and parking, go to dixpark.org/wings.
This story was originally published October 8, 2021 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Dix Park ready to take flight with first international art exhibit ‘Wings of the City’."
