Eighteen local teens created artwork in response to the questions, how do you share your cultural identity? How would you like to take your place in the museum? The teens’ work challenges stereotypes and will be featured in a museum display which invites visitors to consider cultural identity.

The display – comprising two chairs and the combined teen artworks – will be on view in the museum, where the teens will be on hand to welcome the public in a special event, Take Your Place/Toma tu lugar on Saturday, June 4 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge). They will be facilitating fun gallery activities inspired by the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, including making “light-up” postcards, experiencing old-school stereoscopic 3D views, sketching, and more. The display will be situated in the World’s Fair section of the All the World Is Here exhibition, and will remain on view through October 15.

“At first, I was really surprised like, oh, they’re going actually put something that I made for a lot of people to see. And I was like, oh, it has to be good!” said Diana Pineda Mendoza, 14, of Somerville, one of the Latina teens who participated in the Hear Me Out/Escúchame project at the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture (HMSC). Launched in 2020 by HMSC in partnership with three youth-serving agencies – Chelsea Recreation and Cultural Affairs Division in Chelsea and the Welcome Project in Somerville and the Somerville Media Center – the project expands Latinx engagement in the museums by collaborating with youth.

The teens experiment with creative approaches inspired by their experiences in the museum galleries. They explore what they feel is important and still overlooked about their cultural identities which include ancestral ties to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, and Mexico.

“The whole point of the Hear Me Out/Escúchame program is that each one of us from any region of Latin America or the Caribbean – we create something to represent each of our cultures,” says Carla Larios Flores, 16, a participant from Somerville who has family from El Salvador. “And a lot of people are intrigued by that because they don’t know too much about Latin America, and more specifically Central America.”

Some artworks include flags of Central American nations, while others give a shout-out to a hometown or point to personal aspirations. Invited to consider cultures and cultural stereotypes as depicted during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the teens riffed on the importance of representation.

“If you see a culture that’s unfamiliar, you’re being presented with like, new ideas, with new people,” said Lindsay Pineda Mendoza, 15, of Chelsea. “And I feel like that’s really important to be exposed to, because if you’re not really exposed to it, and if you have negative attitude towards it, you might be closed-minded to these new groups or new people.”

Take Your Place/Toma tu lugar showcases the third project by Hear Me Out/Escúchame teens. Learn more about previous projects.