Podcast hosts Babelito and FavyFav, both UNLV alums, will join Dr. Erika Abad for a conversation about Latinx representation in the media and Las Vegas at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 5. Latinos Who Lunch is a podcast that was created to provide a digital media platform that reflected the intersectionality between queer, Latinx, and Spanglish voices in an Anglo-dominated podcast world.
FavyFav and Babelito approach the topics of identity, food, family and history in a responsible yet humorous way. Latinos Who Lunch intends to blend all these ideas together by placing into context everything from the piñata as a symbol of multiculturalism in Mexico, to the politics of Frida Kahlo as an icon of Mexicanidad. By maintaining visibility, accessibility, and a philosophy of de-centering white male-dominating cultural practices at the core mission of their content, Latinos Who Lunch strives to open a dialogue with their listeners about topics that many podcasts will not address.
Babelito, recently received a Ph.D. in Ibero-America colonial art history from the University of New Mexico. Since 2007 he has explored themes of violence, identity, race, and class difference in colonial Latin American art. Among other venues, Babelito has presented his work at The Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), The Denver Art Museum, The College of Art Association and American Studies Association. He has curated art exhibitions for Museo de Arte Religioso Ex-Convento de Santa Mónica in Puebla México, for the Mexican Consulate in Las Vegas and for the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). His essay titled Hagiographical Misery and the Liminal Witness: Novohispanic Franciscan Martyr Portraits and the Politics of Imperial Expansion, was published by Brill in the spring of 2018. His essay titled Spanish Colonial Art History and the Work of Empire is forthcoming in UCLA's Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture Journal this fall. Currently, Babelito is a visiting professor in Chicago, collaborates to the education programs of Arquetopia, Foundation for Development in Puebla and Oaxaca Mexico, and lectures on Latinx visibility in the podcast world.
FavyFav is a Las Vegas native working in the mediums of painting, sculpture, and performance. His work draws from art history, popular culture and his Guatemalan/Mexican heritage. He has participated in exhibitions and been awarded artists residencies across the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Favela has curated many shows throughout southern Nevada, at spaces such as UNLV’s Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art to El Porvenir Mini-Market in North Las Vegas. Recent exhibitions of note include Unsettled at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno; Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Place, featuring site-specific installations by 13 Latino artists that express experiences of contemporary life in the American West at the Denver Art Museum and the group exhibition Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness touring the United Kingdom. FavyFav is also the 2018 recipient of the Alan Turing LGTBIQ Award for International Artist.
Professor Erika Gisela Abad joined UNLV's interdisciplinary, gender, and ethnic studies department in fall 2016. While her primary training has been in queer and Latinx Studies, working in customer service, Latino youth advocacy, and food justice has added to her initial insights on Queer Latinx individuals' representation in community building and social movements. Since 2017, Abad has presented at ClexaCon — an annual media and entertainment convention for the female LGBTQ community and its allies — and organized its first academic lab in 2019. Extending her interest in queer women’s representation, her guest-edited issue of Sinister Wisdom is set to be published in late 2019. Before working in Las Vegas, she was a Chicago-based oral historian and ethnographer for the Center for Puerto Rican Studies.Her expertise has been published in Sounding Out, Latinx Talk, Women in Higher Education Newsletter. Abad is also a well-published essayist, poet, and fiction writer whose creative works have been published in Sinister Wisdom and Crab Fat Magazine, among other venues.
