El Chante: Casa de Cultura is an art gallery and boutique that fuses local poetry, music, art and New Mexican culture.
Bianca Encinias, a local artist and owner of El Chante, said she created the space to provide a location that emphasizes the positive side of New Mexican culture.
“When you turn on the news, you always hear about violence, gang violence, or just a bunch of negative stuff,” Encinias said. “But there’s a lot of creativity and a lot of different types of art that’s going on here in New Mexico.”
“El Chante,” Encinias said, is a New Mexican Spanish term meaning “home,” or “my pad.” When she devised the concept for the gallery and boutique, which also sells clothes, books, jewelry and other knick-knacks, she said she wanted to create a space where people feel they belong.
“What do you think of when you think of home?” Encinias asked.
“You think of family, you think of comfort, you think of happy times, and you think of a space where you feel welcome and that you identify with.”
She said some artists, specifically New Mexican artists, don’t have access to galleries or don’t feel welcome in them. Galleries often charge somewhere between 45-50 percent of artists’ earnings from each painting they sell, and the artists end up losing money, she said. El Chante, on the other hand, charges 20 percent.
The next art show, “La Buena Vida,” is this Friday. It features work by two young chicanos, Felipe Tapia and Diego “Disko” Trujillo. Encinias said the show is part of an ongoing series at El Chante called “Knowledge Sharing: Remembering Our Past and Re-Claiming Our Collective Histories.”
“The neat thing about this art show is that one of the paintings they’re doing is actually taken from a picture in book called 500 Years of Chicano History,” she said.
The painting, she said, is of a protest that took place in Santa Fe after a Chicano activist, 20-year-old Felipe Mares, was killed in 1969. The show features 30 pieces, some of which deal with religious and graffiti-inspired subjects, according to a press release about the event.
El Chante also has a monthly poetry night organized by a local poet, entitled “Speak, Poet: Voz, Palabra y Sonido.” This month’s poetry night, hosted by Andrea Serrano, is this Thursday. It features poets Alex Bachicha, Monique Campos, Fernando Lopez, and Amanda Salinas, along with some poets who, according to a press release, “are new to the mic but have something powerful to say.”
In the future, Encinias wants to offer space at El Chante to performance artists and musicians.
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“Whatever comes out of our community in terms of art should be valued, just like anything else is valued,” Encinias said.
Teresa Cordoba, a UNM student and a friend of Encinias, said El Chante is a great space for people who appreciate art in all aspects.
“I think it’s a really important space for all the people to connect and to have a lot of grassroots artistry come out to the forefront, which a lot of galleries in the Southwest don’t really do for local communities sometimes,” Cordoba said. “It’s really welcoming to a more local crew. Everyone feels like it’s home; it’s El Chante, you know?”
