Pictured above- Lusmerlin (Dominican Republic) – Consecration of Stardust. 48×36. Pastel & Acrylic on Wood. 2025

By F. Lennox Campello

Last year, when I curated the sprawling “Women Artists of the DMV” survey show, which eventually ended being showcased across the region in 19 different venues, I said to myself something along the lines of “never again am I going to curate such a sprawling show…”

Cough… cough…

When my family arrived from Cuba to the United States in the 1960s, I was a child. I now realize how that momentous event left a deep footprint on the rest of my life – especially upon my own artistic development.  We were part of the historical beginning of the Cuban Diaspora, when eventually nearly a quarter of the island’s population left the island to escape the brutality of a murderous Communist dictatorship, and resettled all over the world, with the largest number in the United States.  My family and I settled in Brooklyn, New York, in a neighborhood mostly populated at the time by Italian immigrants.  We were immigrants living among other immigrants.

Years later when I attended art school at the University of Washington in Seattle, the impact of that forced migration resurfaced in my own artwork, into what eventually developed into what is now called the “Cuba Series” – a nearly 50-year-old series with the island of Cuba as the focus of the work.

In Washington, most Spanish-speaking people were of Mexican ancestry, and I often joke that I felt that I was the only person of Cuban ancestry in the entire state. “What are you?” would ask wide-eyed Mexican waitresses when I discovered Mexican food and would talk to them in Spanish at any of the many Mexican restaurants in the city – my machine gun rapid-fire Cuban Spanish so immensely different from their melodious Mexican Spanish.

Someone once noted that “Cubans use Spanish as a weapon.”

Over the decades, I was lucky enough to live in many parts of the United States and well as several countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with the usual wandering life of a Navy officer.  Upon arriving to the Washington, DC area, one of my first discoveries was the incredible diversity of people from all over the world who call this area home.

In the nearly 40 years that I have been around the capital region, and with over 200 curated fine arts exhibitions under my belt – most recently the aforementioned “Women Artists of the DMV” survey show, which was staged in 19 different fine art galleries, venues and museums, and surveyed over 700 artists – I have been lucky enough to meet, curate, and know hundreds of area artists who (like me) are immigrants to this great nation.

And thus, the germ of the idea of organizing a fine arts show of 30 or so artists from all over the world to showcase how art can serve not only to preserve one’s own cultural identity, but also paradoxically to tie us together as one… has now emerged.

In this show, which I would like to hang salon style, rather than a minimalistic-hung show, you will see art by artists from Russia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Holland, Lebanon, Venezuela, England, Canada, Japan, Philippines, Germany, and many other countries. You will also see these artists challenging you to see their art in the context of the art, rather than the national origin of the artist, while also challenging you to see it also from the exact opposite perspective.

If accepted, I’d like the show hung in a raucous, overhung, salon-style format, to showcase in its own way, the cacophony of immigrating from a birthland to a new land.

Be ready to be immersed in art by planet Earth citizens.

I am initially proposing this show in response to the recent Call for Exhibition Proposals by the King Street Gallery of the Montgomery College Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus.  In the event that they decline, I will try to offer it to any of the other great art venues in our area.

Can you “feel” where this is heading?

About the Author: F. Lennox Campello’s art news, information, gallery openings, commentary, criticism, happenings, opportunities, and everything associated with the global visual arts scene with a special focus on the Greater Washington, DC area has been a premier source for the art community for over 20 years. Since 2003, his blog has been the 11th highest ranked art blog on the planet with over SIX million visitors.