Alebrijes, surrealist Mexican folk sculptures, bring color to riverfront

RASPBERRY ISLAND

Minnesota Latino Museum, which organized the outdoor exhibition, is holding a community festival on June 14

Minnesota Latino Museum director Aaron Johnson-Ortiz, center, stands with artists Edgar Israel Camargo Reyes, right, and Alberto Moreno Fernández, left, whose monumental alebrijes sculptures are on display on Raspberry Island through Oct. 2025. COURTESY OF MINNESOTA LATINO MUSEUM

“Baron,” a massive alebrije sculpture by Mexican artist Alberto Moreno Fernandez, sits on wood stumps amid other sculptures on Raspberry Island on May 30, 2025. JARED KAUFMAN — PIONEER PRESS

“Xolo,” a large sculpture by Mexican artist Alberto Moreno Fernández, sits on Raspberry Island on May 30, 2025. Whereas many other alebrijes are surrealist and imaginative, this piece is inspired by a Mexican folkloric tale, the artist explained. JARED KAUFMAN — PIONEER PRESS

Image

By Jared Kaufman

jkaufman@pioneerpress.com

A few weeks ago, Raspberry Island was looking a bit worse for wear, said Aaron Johnson-Ortiz, executive director of the Minnesota Latino Museum.

And then the alebrijes showed up.

Alebrijes are larger-than-life Mexican folk sculptures, often made with paper and cardboard in a papier-mâché-like style, that depict imaginative creatures in bold colors and patterns. Sixteen of these artworks are on display at Raspberry Island through Oct. 26 as a public art exhibition coordinated by the Minnesota Latino Museum and Mexican Cultural Center DuPage in Illinois called “Alebrijes: Keepers of the Island.”

The alebrijes in the exhibition were initially created within the past several years in Mexico City by four artists based there: Perla Miriam Salgado Zamorano, Alejandro Camacho Barrera, Edgar Israel Camargo Reyes and Alberto Moreno Fernández. The modern tradition of alebrijes originated in the 1930s with artist Pedro Linares, though the specific paper-craft style, called cartonería, has been practiced for centuries and is also associated with piñatas, masks and objects for Day of the Dead.

The Minnesota Latino Museum is also planning a community festival from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 14, on Raspberry Island, with music, food trucks and community art opportunities for all ages.

The Raspberry Island exhibition’s subtitle is apt: Johnson—Ortiz said the sculptures brought attention to the island in advance of the exhibition’s June 1 opening and spurred the city to care for it in ways they had not previously.

“(The city) repainted the bridge, they repainted the building, they took out old dead trees, they put in new mulch, they put in new flower beds,” he said. “In some ways, what we’re doing here is a kind of political intervention, encouraging the city to rethink what the parks district on the riverfront should look like. …We believe that art has a transformative impact on our lived environment, and we’re seeing it in real time happen here right on this island.”

Throughout the summer, the alebrijes themselves will need to be cared for, too — after all, they’re cardboard-based sculptures installed outdoors for five months.

Nearly every day during the exhibition’s run, the artists and other representatives from the Minnesota Latino Museum will be on the island repainting the sculptures and repairing possible damage from exposure to the elements. The organization also maintains a private studio space on Grand Avenue for more extensive repairs, Johnson-Ortiz said.

And prior to the opening of the Raspberry Island exhibit, the artists spent about six weeks in a residency at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, fixing and reconstructing the delicate works. For example, inside one particularly monumental sculpture, Moreno Fernández’s “Xolo,” which resembles a large black dog, the artist found signs of significant rot following a previous exhibition. He completely deconstructed, cleaned, and rebuilt the sculpture layer by layer with fresh materials in a process that took nearly a month, he said. (Artists use non-toxic mural paints, he added.)

“Every time, we try to improve it a little more,” Moreno Fernández said in Spanish. “Artisanship is a lot of work!”

The exhibition on Raspberry Island was formally inaugurated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony May 30 that featured speakers including Johnson-Ortiz; St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter; City Council President Rebecca Noecker; state Reps. María Isa Pérez-Vega, Samakab Hussein and Mary Frances Clardy; Carlos Tortolero, founder and former president of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago; and several other leaders of local organizations.

“To have this here, now, this summer — it’s defining for us,” Carter told the crowd. “I’ve said it before: You show me a great city, and I’ll show you great art.”

The Minnesota Latino Museum, operated by local nonprofit (Neo)Muralismos de México, does not currently have a permanent home but is planning one near Harriet Island Regional Park. The project appears to have significant local support, and museum organizers working to secure both state and federal funding, including a successful challenge against the termination of National Endowment for the Arts grants, Johnson-Ortiz announced separately this week

Despite both strong arts funding and a vibrant Mexican population in both St. Paul and Minnesota at large, Johnson-Ortiz said, “we feel that Latinos and in general and Mexicans specifically have not been represented by really any museum in Minnesota.” This is the goal of the Minnesota Latino Museum — uplifting local Latin-American culture and arts, especially given the strong Latino cultural influence on the West Side along the Mississippi River — and the alebrijes exhibit acts as a proof-of-concept, he said.

“Our art show is doing what decades of city bureaucracy has been unable to do, which is transform the Mississippi riverfront,” Johnson-Ortiz said in an interview after the ribbon-cutting. “We’re going to be here all summer doing that work, and of course we want to do that work in the long term with the Minnesota Latino Museum.”