Sioux City Art Center holds La Loteria exhibition

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
September 15, 2005

The newest exhibition at the Sioux City Art Center features a popular Mexican game, la loteria, that has religious symbols and artwork as part of it.

The exhibition is titled La Loteria: Una Ventana en la Cultura e Historia de Mexico (La Loteria: A Window into the Culture and History of Mexico) and it began July 16 and will end Oct. 16. This exhibition explores the artistic and historic tradition of the popular Mexican game La Loteria. The exhibition is guest curated by Sue Erickson Nieland and organized by the Sioux City Art Center.

"I proposed the exhibition because I thought perhaps they might want to have an exhibition that would bring Hispanics, primarily Mexicans, into the Art Center," said Nieland. "It was something of interest to me - I was studying it."

Loteria is similar to Bingo and is a game of chance, including game boards with predominately symbolic images rather than numbers. To play the game, instead of just saying the name of the image, the game master gives the players verbal clues in the form of poems or riddles to identify the objects on their card.

At the Art Center, examples of traditional and hand-painted loteria game boards from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are on display. The artwork is done by anonymous folk artists and several of the games were designed by a Mexican printmaker, Jose Guadalupe Posada.

"We have a chronological arrangement of games," said Nieland. The set up of the exhibit is from older to new around the room with descriptions of the different pieces. There are old and new, religious and secular and also contemporary pieces.

A group of religious paintings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are also included in the exhibit. According to Nieland, the works contain Christian iconographic symbols that illustrate the connection between popular religious identity and the loteria.

"We have a set of paintings that have religious references to the game for people," said Nieland. "There are a lot of Marian images that are scattered throughout the games as well as passion images. You see things like the ladder, the crown of thorns and the columns."

Another image of the passion that is depicted is the rooster as well as hammers, nails and the dice, noted Nieland.

"They are a play between images that are associated with the passion and devotion to the passion continues to be very strong in Spanish-America," said Nieland. "They are definitely images from the Catholic tradition. For example, there are about six different representations of the Virgin Mary."

There was an opening reception for La Loteria at the Art Center on July 16 from 5 to 7 p.m. with a gallery talk by Nieland.

Along with the exhibition, a three-part Mexican film series will be hosted by Dr. Gail Ament, an associate professor at Morningside College in Sioux City. Each screening will begin with an introduction and end with an open, bilingual discussion.

For more information about the exhibition, contact the Sioux City Art Center at (712) 279-6272 or visit their Web site at www.siouxcityartcenter.org.