Vámonos pa’l monte (Let's go to the mountains)

This week, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage revealed Mural Arts Philadelphia as one of eighteen recipients of its 2024 Creative Project Grants.

Just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month, Mural Arts Philadelphia is proud to announce that our $300,000 project grant, with an additional $60,000 provided in unrestricted general operating support, will be used to fund Vámonos pa’l monte (Let’s go to the mountains), a collaborative processional performance created by multi-disciplinary artist Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz. Curated by University of Pennsylvania American Art professor Dr. Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, the project will explore and celebrate the culturally complex identities of Puerto Ricans in the United States.

Raimundi-Ortiz will collaborate extensively with the Puerto Rican community of Philadelphia’s Norris Square over the next two years, conducting one-on-one interviews and workshops, as well as inviting them to join the culminating procession in 2026. Production Manager and Designer Kristina Tollefson will also collaborate on Vámonos pa’l monte, contributing her expertise in costume design to create a multi-sensory experience combining movement, sound design, and music. The procession will begin at City Hall, pass Independence Mall, and conclude in Norris Square.

The route and sites of the performances of the Vámonos pa’l monte project will be decided during Raimundi-Ortiz’s meetings with local stakeholders. Throughout the procession, Raimundi-Ortiz and participants will pause at multiple points, adding and shedding costume layers and incorporating motifs and symbols of Puerto Rico’s ecology and landscape, giving the audience various opportunities to engage with the procession.

This festive event will be performed amid the nation’s 250th-anniversary celebrations, presenting a defiant and joyous representation of the manifold ways in which Puerto Ricans adapt to sustain their identities while living in the United States.

Vámonos pa’l monte will build on the work that Mural Arts Philadelphia has previously done in Norris Square in North Philadelphia, dating back to the ‘80s. This neighborhood is the heart of Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican community and the second-largest Puerto Rican community outside of the island, after New York City. Norris Square has been facing issues of rapid gentrification for years, including rising property taxes, rents, and poor construction practices that have largely benefitted wealthy newcomers and displaced long-time residents.

Navigating the Puerto Rican-American Identity

For over 25 years, artist Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz has addressed race, bias, trauma, afro-Latinx concerns, urban futurism, and catharsis through her art. The Bronx-born daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants draws from 17th and 18th-century European portraiture, comic books, sketch comedy, folkloric dance, and installation to convey messages of intersectionality and healing. Her works often require participation from the viewer, resulting in immersive pieces that cause her audiences to reflect and learn.

“I am deeply invested in race relations, critical race theory, and anti-Blackness, especially within the Latinx community,” says Raimundi-Ortiz in an artist statement on her website. “As in nature, communities strive for harmonious coexistence but are often distorted and warped under societal and environmental pressures,” she notes.

Raimundi-Ortiz utilizes a variety of mediums to explore not only the role that Puerto Ricans play in American culture but also her own cultural identity as a first-generation Puerto Rican American. In 2023, Raimundi-Ortiz released a collection of pastel and charcoal drawings featuring landscapes that stood out to her during a family trip to Puerto Rico. Inspired by photos she took on her trip, she traced the lines and curves of the island in an attempt to connect with her parents’ homeland.

Having had personal experiences with Puerto Rico, Raimundi-Ortiz now wishes to instill a strong sense of cultural identity in her son. Vámonos pa’l monte stems from her desire to provide her son with experiences of Puerto Rico that “fill his senses and moor his story to a real place and people who have no choice but to persist and rise.”

The goal of the Vámonos pa’l monte project is to allow the historically colonized to defy and bypass the prospect of assimilation by centering Puerto Ricans and Norris Square as its main focus.

The Vámonos pa’l monte procession is not just an urban street party but also a depiction of the joyful and bold Puerto Rican culture that brings life to Philadelphia. It is a celebration of the identities Puerto Rican Americans hold and an acknowledgment of the hardships they and their ancestors have faced since migrating.

Vámonos pa’l monte is a call for Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia to honor their roots and express their true selves and an invitation for viewers to learn more about the history of this key segment of our beautifully diverse city.

Vámonos pa’l monte has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.