During a time politicized by debates around immigrant criminality and labor, one artist used her platform to build an exhibition around the harms of treating a racial group as a monolith. Through her display, “Los Gigantes Duermen en la Sala,” Sandra Iraheta, a junior majoring in design, focuses on the idea of “rest” and reductive archetypes characterizing Latine people across the United States. 

Bold, swirling colors and white calla lilies neighbor distorted bodies throughout Iraheta’s paintings as she materializes her childhood memories and home nostalgia through brushstrokes. The exhibition wrestles with themes such as family, labor and identity, featuring various human figures in domestic settings. 

“The whole series is inspired a lot by childhood memories. The living room couch was where [my family and I] lived,” Iraheta said. “I just wanted to honor that.”  

Though the exhibition houses many multimedia pieces, the work began with the production of a nine-by-six-foot canvas cloth painting. 

“It was based on this memory of when [my dad] would come home from work. He would always take a nap in the living room, but we would all watch TV, and it became a symbol of how labor doesn’t allow you rest, and how I have the ability to have so much rest, and what that means,” Iraheta said. 

In this large painting, Iraheta and her family can be observed in the living room as the television plays — a projector overlays images of flowers onto the painted screen. 

Madeleine Cornejo Carrillo, a fifth-year majoring in psychology, related to the artwork.

“It reminds me a lot of my childhood with my siblings and my family and how we would be sitting in the living room, just watching TV. And I like that this projector makes it very vivid, as if they were really watching TV,” Cornejo Carrillo said. 

Showcased in nearly every painting, Iraheta said flowers symbolize growth from childhood to adulthood and are most prominent in a portrait of Iraheta as her younger self. 

“I’m a child and surrounded by [the flowers], and [they] probably overpower my presence, but we’re one and the same,” Iraheta said. 

For Ashley Corral, a junior majoring in intelligence and cyber operations, the painting of Iraheta as a child also reminded her of her own childhood. 

“When I was smaller, my mom would dress me up in these really poofy dresses just like that, so I thought that [painting] was cute,” Corral said. “I really loved the flowers and all the color that she added to her portrait.”

Corral and Iraheta met through Kappa Delta Chi, a Latina sorority focusing on academics and community service. Since rushing, the two have become close friends, sharing a sense of identity because of the sorority, Corral said. 

“I resonate with [the paintings] because I know she’s Hispanic, and I am too, and I too had this vibrant living room where all our family would be together. It’s just very beautiful,” Corral said. 

The idea for the exhibition dawned on Iraheta after she reflected on the results of the 2024 United States presidential election. Her presumptions about the Latine voter bloc were refuted, forcing her to think about the harms of overgeneralizing and stereotyping a specific population. 

“After the election results had come out, I was shocked that Latino voters didn’t vote the way that I thought they would, and I immediately associated blame, which isn’t productive,” Iraheta said. “But I started thinking about how different people have different access to different types of media, and how rest and labor intersect with access to that, and how [each] is a result of each other.”

Naming her exhibition after “Los Gigantes,” or the giants, directly references the phrase “sleeping giant.” In this context, Iraheta notes how the term criticizes the belief in an untapped voting potential of the Latine population bloc, assuming that all Latines, were they to vote, would do so along the same party lines and therefore sway the election. 

Beyond challenging this notion through her work, Iraheta wanted to highlight the complexity and diversity of her community, centering a discussion on the dichotomy between labor and rest. Her exhibition statement asks, “Who is ‘deserving’ of rest?” 

“So often, Latinos are depicted through labor-driven archetypes, and that’s often what their identity is reduced to,” Iraheta said. “I wanted to depict this idea of rest, and I think this exists even outside of the 2024 election, which is what inspired the main piece. The whole series exists even beyond that.” 

Corral said the art is in direct conversation with recent political events and debates around immigration. 

“It’s important just to show our presence not only in the art world but in everything, especially with so much that is going on with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and with our president being so hateful toward my people. I think it’s important to show up and still show that we’re united, and we’re together, and to represent who we are,” Corral said.  

During a time embodied by militarization, Iraheta notes the importance of documenting these figures in their private, natural settings. In her statement, she highlights these depictions as being “rendered unapologetically, larger-than-life-like, vastly.”  

“Especially right now, in times where visibility is something dangerous, it’s important to not hide and to have these types of depictions be as present as we can make them,” Iraheta said.  

“Los Gigantes Duermen en la Sala” will run at the Roski Gallery until Sept. 16 via appointment.

Disclaimer: Sandra Iraheta formerly served as an art & design staff member at the Daily Trojan in Spring 2025. Iraheta is not currently affiliated with this paper.