Enrique Alférez: Symbols of Communication

To create this imposing three-story bas-relief sculpture, Alférez stamped a series of plaster panels with hand-carved wooden molds containing characters and symbols meant to represent all human languages.

The mural celebrates the power of language to reach across cultures and time by weaving together a vast array of alphabets.

The panels include languages from across the world, including Greek and Roman alphabets...

...Arabic, Chinese and Japanese characters...

...Mayan glyphs and hieroglyphics from ancient Egypt...

...numerical symbols, and the dots and dashes of Morse code and Braille, among many other sources.

Alférez was born in Mexico in 1901, and first visited New Orleans in 1929. He created over twenty major public works—sculptures and wall reliefs in metal, plaster and wood—throughout the city.

His work can still be found all across New Orleans. He created a site-specific installation for the entrance to New Orleans's Charity Hospital...

...a series of sculptures for the facade of this airport, and many large scale sculptures that can now be seen at the New Orleans Botanical Garden in City Park.

Alférez came of age during the political fervor of the Mexican Revolution, and grew up in a world in which art was deeply intertwined with politics.

In the early 1920s, he was exposed to the work of Mexican artists like Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

These artists made art a centerpiece of the Mexican Revolution, treating it as a tool for advancing their fight for education and liberation.

Like Alférez, many of these artists focused on creating large-scale public artworks and murals meant to exist in public spaces.

Alférez's art reflected his own political convictions and belief in the power of everyday people make big change.

Symbols of Communication highlights the power and importance of communication, as well as the role that art has to play in helping us reach across cultures to connect with others.

Symbols of Communication is now the centerpiece of the museum's new Lapis Center for the Arts, a mixed-use performance, lecture and event space where it will be animated by music, dance and the sharing of new ideas for years to come.