Walk into Prism Art Gallery in Midtown right now and you might do a double take. Hanging from the ceiling and propped on pedestals are piñatas—but these aren’t the dollar-store donkeys you whack at birthday parties. They’re the artistic statement of a decade, the political manifesto of a community, the keepsake of a childhood lost to time.
SMASH! A Piñata Exhibition, open through May 30, is asking Sacramento to see piñatas the way curators Bridgett Rex and Vianne De Santiago do: as vessels that hold anything—grief, joy, resistance, memory.“I see piñatas as vessels of joy, grief, [they] can hold anything you want it to,”Rex explained, with the goal of making the show accessible to anyone, regardless of age.
What makes this exhibit genuinely revelatory isn’t the novelty of the concept—it’s the specificity of the stories. Take Andres Alvarez’s“In ixtli, in yollotl”(the face, the heart), a stack of Latino and Chicano author anthologies wrapped in hojas de maiz (corn husks). Or Iris Hernandez and her mother Lorena Raya’s Piñatasaurus creation: a vase filled with flowers, a broom, a mop, and miniature tamales—a visual autobiography of immigration, labor, and resilience. Each piñata is an artifact of lived experience, rendered in tissue paper and hope.
Then there’s Luis Garcia’s ICE vehicle ablaze on cinder blocks—a piñata that won’t be smashed. For Garcia, a Sac State art professor, keeping it intact sends a sharper message about resistance to federal crackdowns on Latino and immigrant communities.“We can draw on our own cultural knowledge to speak up against our current political climate,”he said. It’s a reminder that not all piñatas are meant to be destroyed. Some are meant to stand.
What strikes you walking through the gallery is how many of these works circle back to childhood—not in a nostalgic, saccharine way, but as a doorway to understanding who these artists are now. Ramona Garcia’s nested Lupita dolls celebrate tradition kept alive. Christina Marenco’s pan dulce van recalls her grandmother’s commitment to togetherness. Ismar Yanalté Quiroz turned her work in a morgue and the loss of her sister into a meditation on grief and mourning, made beautiful with cones, ribbons, and dark lace.
The exhibit closes on May 30 with a smashing of selected piñatas—a ritual destruction that feels less like vandalism and more like permission. Permission to let go, to honor the ephemeral, to understand that some art isn’t meant to last forever. In a culture obsessed with permanence, that’s genuinely radical. What would it mean if we treated more of our most precious things—our stories, our traditions, our memories—as fleeting but no less worthy of celebration?
About the Author
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
