Living In My Skin: A Look Into San Antonio’s Black Community
April 23, 2021 - Downtown
Living in My Skin. Lionel Sosa’s latest art exhibit features 33 Black men in San Antonio. The mural is dedicated to actively being anti-racist and to demonstrate the hardships the Black community has gone through. Photos: B. Kay Richter.
By Valeria Torrealba, Senior Reporter | San Antonio Sentinel
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
- Sosa’s latest creation speaks to harmonize race relationships as well as demonstrate the hardships the Black community has gone through while visually narrating the stories of these men.
- Living in My Skin is dedicated to actively being anti-racist and features 33 Black men in San Antonio.
Mexican-American artist Lionel Sosa’s latest art exhibit, Living In My Skin, features 33 Black men in San Antonio, each painted in vibrant colors with a story to their names. With a recent mural of the exhibit displayed at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts and an online documentary accompanying, Sosa’s latest creation speaks to harmonize race relationships, demonstrate the hardships the Black community has gone through and visually narrates the stories of these men.
Sosa’s mural exhibit and digital work is dedicated to actively being anti-racist, a mission he embarked on shortly after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. As said on the exhibit’s website, Sosa’s revelation came as he walked with his wife, Kathy, and their dogs — a shop’s window read clearly: “You can’t be anti-racist, unless you’re actively anti-racist,” and the message resonated with Sosa, encouraging him to create the exhibit.
“I've heard the stories of discrimination from my friends and what I've experienced in the Hispanic community, but I don't think it's even a small percentage of the discrimination that a Black man [or Black woman] has to face every day of their lives,” Sosa said. “To them, it really is a daily challenge in their skin. Because they are Black, they are perceived many times, by many people — not all, you know — but somehow are seen as different. Sometimes they’re seen as [though] they don’t belong here.”
The documentary that accompanies the work of art allows for the men featured in the exhibit to share their experiences verbally, promoting a more intimate look into their lives.
“Both my wife, Kathy and I, have been working on all of this, including the documentary, which I think in many ways could be the most important part of the project,” Sosa said. “It is the actual storytelling. It is the people talking about their experiences one-on-one and sharing their stories that they’ve never shared with anyone, other than a few friends. In terms of being able to express themselves, for some of the men it’s the first time they’ve been able to tell these pent up stories and share them with someone.”
As reported by La Prensa Texas, “The need for greater understanding of one another in San Antonio and elsewhere in America seemed to resonate with many, Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Asians in the aftermath of the horrific murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in May 2020.” After an arduous year of protests and rallies calling to defund the police and support Black lives, many of the events that occurred last summer across the country continue to unfold today. With the recent killings of Daunte Wright — just a few miles away from where Floyd’s death also occurred — Sosa’s goal to amplify the marginalized voices has not changed.
“When I said ‘You can't be anti racist until unless you're actively anti racist’, I realized that I have never been actively anti-racist. I realized that I needed to do something, and the only way that I thought that I could actively be anti-racist is to take the portraits of these men, so they could be in a museum,” Sosa said. “[That way], people that are often overlooked could be in a place where they would be viewed as heroes, heroic Americans and equal Americans. I thought ‘Wow, and now I have a chance to tell their story and share their story.’”
Each subject portrayed is between 10 to 90 years old with a different story behind their portrait. Sosa’s mural — which stands at “12 feet high and 100 feet across,” according to the artist — brought together the men portrayed in it, forming a “fellowship” and admiring each other’s contribution to the project.
“I believe that all of these men, together, themselves, are making closer friendships with each other,” Sosa said. “I saw at the unveiling of the mural just how glad they are to be in this fellowship, and to be part of [this].”
As a Mexican-American artist, Sosa pulled from his own experiences with discrimination as a minority to emphasize the importance of harmonious race relations within the San Antonio community.
“This gives me a perfect opportunity to begin my portrait painting career, by doing something of significance, that may be able to bring about a better understanding of the races in San Antonio and how we may be able to build a better and more united community. It’s a joy for me to do these paintings — it fulfills two goals: the second goal to bring about racial harmony. I’m excited about the way that it’s happening.”
Sosa’s exhibit can be found online along with the documentary.
Valeria Torrealba is an opinions columnist and public relations assistant at the University Star, a student publication of Texas State University. Email her at reporter@sasentinel.com