Broadway Street Triptych: Cultural Relocation and Spiritual Borders in Toledo, Ohio

Borderlands are everywhere. Broadway Street in Toledo, Ohio is both host and home to Latin@s and Chican@s experiencing daily borders such as citizenry, language, religion, spirituality, gender, and culture. In response to an assignment to creatively capture an aspect of these borders located on Broadway, I have created a tryptych displaying found artifacts and visual representations of the various borders portrayed physically on this one street in Toledo. My inspiration for this art piece was a contemporary art movement called Rasquache, an important Chican@ movement in response to the negative stereotype associated with lower class culture and values. I argue that Boradway Street and the city of Toledo is very much an example of rasquache in the various efforts to create inspiration and meaning out of found objects, vacant lots and buildings, empty or underappreciated spaces. I recognize these liminal spaces as borderlands and focus on the cultural religious and gendered aspects of these border spaces in the triptych, displaying the specific rasquache characteristic of cultural hybridity as beauty.