Museo de las Americas presents Pachucos y Sirenas Feb. 8-May 26 as their opening exhibition of 2018. The exhibition is a combination of old- and new-school artists sharing an affection for the

Pachuco legacy. The Pachuco era of the late 1930s and ‘40s was a period in which Mexican-American youth culture cultivated a highly stylized language and fashion as a way of expressing cultural pride during a time when the very nature of being Latino was considered un-American. This exhibition will feature the Caló language and the zoot suit, and there will also be a look at the role fashion plays in cultivating street identities through an esprit de corps shared by people who have the chance to create a lifestyle of their very own.

Artists will include Justin Favela, who has produced a full-size lowrider piñata for the exhibit; Antonia Fernandez, a painter who embraces “the body-modifying Latina—‘the pachuca,' who redefined what it meant to defy conventional beauty standards of the 1940s”; Carlos Fresquez, a revisionist artist who questions the essence of machismo with his Pink Pachuco, a refashioned, pink spray-painted zoot suit; Josiah Lopez, a graffiti muralist and longtime resident of La Alma/Lincoln Park who “uses the street as inspiration”; Jerry Vigil, a traditional and non-traditional artist who takes the “calavera” (skull) and “intertwines the aesthetic with pop culture idols of Latino descent”; and Daniel Salazar, a photographer whose portraits of the National Chicano Dance Theater can be seen with men and women fashioned like a traditional Pachuco and Sirena laying at the feet of Denver’s skyline.

The programming will also include contributions from fashion designers Cha Cha Romero, Alexandra Peralta, Suavecito Car Club and artist Alfredo Cardenas. For more information, go to museo.org.