Louis Market Grand Opening featuring rasgos asiaticos

Join us for the Grand Opening of Louis’ Market, the new Center for Cultural Organizing on Tucson’s historic South 12th Avenue corridor also known as “La Doce”.

This community celebration marks the transformation of the historic Louis’ Market building into a space for cultural organizing, storytelling, and neighborhood gathering. The evening will feature artistic installations, guided performances, lion dancers, Chinese chorizo and community processions that honor the layered cultural histories of Tucson’s Southside and the communities who continue to shape it.

At the heart of the evening is rasgos asiáticos, a performance installation created by Virginia Grise in collaboration with artists Tanya Orellana, Daniel Gower, David Arevalo, Joan Osato and Nelda Ruiz.  An ongoing project, rasgos asiáticos traces the diasporic journeys and hidden histories of Chinese communities in Mexico and along the U.S.–Mexico border through a hybrid, convivial approach to storytelling that includes site-responsive installations, communal dinners, public talks, and community workshops. 

Previous installations have taken place in an abandoned train shed in Houston, Texas and a Chinatown plaza in Los Angeles, California. Now arriving to the Tucson desert, large cargo boxes scattered throughout the former Chinese grocery store create immersive environments that invite viewers to contemplate ancestral histories and legacies of migration while collectively dreaming future possibilities for the Center for Cultural Organizing and the neighborhoods of La Doce.

rasgos asiáticos is presented in collaboration with Regeneración, the Southwest Folklife Alliance, and a todo dar productions, with generous support from the NEA Our Town grant, the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas Documentation Grant, and the National Performance Network Documentation Grant.

Guides for the evening include members of Regeneración and Feng-Feng Yeh, founder of the Chinese Chorizo Project.

Space is limited to 20 participants per time slot. Public is welcome to sign up for any procession as long as space remains.

Procession Schedule

6:00 PM — Barrio Restoration
6:30 PM — Lion Dancers
7:00 PM — Walk of the Ancestors
7:30 PM — Descendants of the Chinese Grocery Stores
8:00 PM — FUGA
8:30 PM — Regeneración

Programming for this event is part of the Southwest Folklife Alliance’s Cultural Organizing program and a todo dar production’s Talleres for Dreaming.

For more information about SFA’s Cultural Organizing work, please contact info@southwestfolklife.org

For more information about a todo dar productions: atododarproductions.com