Lifestyle
Skateboarders, weavers, kite makers: A Smithsonian party for 'Indigenous voices'
Bolivian women skateboarders — wearing traditional garb — demonstrate their skills on the half pipe.
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It’s a rather unusual skateboard lesson.
Little girls are lined up to learn to balance on a board on a half-pipe ramp. The teachers are young women from Bolivia, in their teens and 20s, wearing traditional garb as a tribute to female strength. Their outfits do not seem as if they are ideal for skateboarding: Each skateboarder wears a beribboned bowler hat and a poofy skirt. Among the eager disciples is Poppy Moore. She’s only 2, she’s from Virginia and she’s brought her own helmet for her very first skateboarding experience.
The scene was on the final day of this year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The theme: “Indigenous Voices of the Americas.” There was skateboarding and more: kite-making, marimba-playing, textile-weaving, singing and dancing. The Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol framed the festival tents on a breezy, blue-sky July day.
Members of a female skating collective from Bolivia offered lessons at the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival.
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For Goats and Soda coverage, we focused on the Latin American contingent since we cover countries of the Global South. As we interviewed the artisans it became clear that they aren’t just local talents. They reach out far beyond their homelands, touching hearts and minds — and even mentoring a new generation of skateboarders.
We spoke to some of the artists who shared their voices at this year’s festival. It was an honor to meet them and witness their creativity. And we’d like to introduce them to you.
Hats off to these hat-wearing skateboarders
In their white bowler hats and Bolivian pollera skirts, the Indigenous all-female skateboard group ImillaSkate showed off their moves at the Folklife Festival —- and also taught beginner tricks to visitors.
“Imilla” means young girl in the Aymara and Quechua language. The skaters, from Cochabamba, Bolivia, say they formed the skating group in 2019 and were inspired by their mothers and grandmothers to wear the traditional garb, along with long twisted braids.
Bolivian skateboarders get ready for a demo.
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“We inherit the clothing,” says Deysi Tacuri Lopez, “and also the struggle and strength that they give us.”
“We want a lot of young girls and boys to join in on skateboarding and at the same time, to recognize their cultural identity,” she adds.
Pamela Moore brought her family to attend the Folklife Festival and her daughter Poppy went to skate for the first time at the skate workshop.
Moore’s family is Bolivian but she was born and raised in Virginia. She was delighted to see the Bolivian contingent at the festival and to see her daughter skate with the group. She says Poppy, who turns 3 this summer, was very proud of her achievement.
Guys appreciate the skaterboarders, too. Aaron Davis of Washington, D.C., a member of the skateboarding nonprofit The D.C. Wheels, praised Imilia Skate’s ability to transcend cultural and gender barriers to illustrate the best of the skateboarding life.
“It’s a way of life, and I relearned that from watching,” says the 28-year-old. He was impressed that, even though the Bolivian skaters don’t speak English, they were able to share “the foundation” of skateboarding with folks so they “can go on and express themselves in their own ways with their skateboard.”
Along the way, there are skateboarding life lessons to impart, too.
“It doesn’t matter how many times you fall,” says María Belén Fajardo Fernández. “The important thing is that you stand up and continue trying.” — K.T.
A song of survival
We’re still here.
It’s a universal theme in song lyrics — remember Elton John’s 1983 hit “I’m Still Standing”? And “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child. And of course Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
This past Monday afternoon, two young men from Brazil’s Indigenous peoples sang their survival song. It was composed by the grandfather of Tambura Amondawa, one of the performers.
Tambura Amondawa (left) sports the bright yellow-orange feathers of the macaw that is their symbol of his clan. At right is Tupi Kawahin, who wears the deep blue feathers of his clan’s mutuanaguera bird symbol. Together they sang a song, composed by Tambura’s grandfather, celebrating the survival of their Indigenous community.
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The singers each wear a meaningful tiara of feathers — Tambura, whose last name is the name of his clan, sports the bright yellow-orange feathers of the macaw that is their symbol. Tupi Kawahin, from a neighboring clan, is crowned with the deep blue feathers of his clan’s mutuanaguera bird.
They blow into what look like wooden flutes but are in fact hollow tubes to amplify their voices and echo the sound of the wind. And they sing in their native language:
“The sun is going down and coming up. The sun is still rising. We are still here.”
For these men, the words speak of a life-and-death situation for their clans, who live on the Uru Eu Wau Wau land in central Brazil bordering Bolivia. In the mid-1980s their community had what Tambura says was its first contact with “non-Indigenous” people. These interlopers wanted the rubber and wood from trees grown on the Indigenous lands. They wanted the land, too.
There were conflicts, Tambura says. And the Amondawa people were exposed to diseases they’d never encountered.
Members of the clan died in skirmishes but mainly, says Tambura, from disease. He thinks the clan’s numbers dropped to about 20 people. “We suffered a lot,” he says.
But … they are still here. And rebounding, marrying and having children. No one knows exactly how many Amondawa there are now, he says — his guess is about 150. Tambura, 33, and his wife have three kids. The clan has lost some territory but the government guaranteed their right to traditional lands in the ’80s and ’90s.
Today, they farm and hunt to sustain themselves. And their immune systems are able to fight off diseases, aided by vaccines — the Brazilian government has made vaccination of Indigenous people a priority. Tambura boasts that he’s even had the COVID vaccine.
As he describes the clan’s life, Tambura mentions a recent leader who was a woman. I say that’s a progressive sign. He says matter-of-factly that she was the smartest person in the village — “that’s how leaders are chosen — who knows best.”
His grandfather who wrote the song he sang is proud that Tambura sings it but was a bit worried when Tambura took off for Washington, D.C., to head to the festival in faraway Washington, D.C. “He doesn’t like his family to go away. He likes his grandson to be there with him.” A universal grandfatherly trait.
An anthropologist is translating Tambura’s Portuguese into English during the interview. (She does not speak his Indigenous language.) She says she’s going to ask him a question herself — some people in Brazil criticize Indigenous people for heading to the hospital at the slightest sign of any symptoms of illness.
Does he think his clan is too quick to seek medical attention? “With what we have been through,” says Tambura, “we are very cautious.” -M.S.
Bobbin and weaving
It takes a lot of concentration to weave myriad threads into a textile of many colors.
“I’m better at dyeing,” admits Diana Hendrickson of Peru, who helps run the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, a Peruvian city. Hendrickson, whose dad is American and mom is Peruvian, works to find a bigger market for the weavings.
Master weavers from Peru wear their creations as they demonstrate the art of weaving at the Folklife Festival.
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Part of the weaving contingent at the Folklife Festival, she inspects the big bubbling cauldrons of water where color is extracted from native plants – and crushed beetles.
The beetles congregate on cacti, she says. Women weavers used to harvest the bugs by hand. Now as weaving has become more of a business, bags of crushed beetles are sold at local markets.
The women, some of whom cannot read and write, learned to weave from older family members, says Hendrickson. They not only earn a living but also put children and grandchildren through school – although the economic crisis in Peru has taken a bite out of their income.
“We support ourselves with that work,” says Marina Maza Huaman. “Sometimes we make more and [sometimes] there are no buyers.”
Their labor is more than a vocation. “Our lives, our history gets poured into what we make,” says Hendrickson.
And they take great pride in their creations. Huaman is wearing a multicolored woven vest with … many buttons. How many?
“Eight hundred!” she says with a broad smile.
The magic of the marimba
A 16-year-old stands over a wooden marimba, wielding a mallet in each hand, striking the wooden bars to create a cheerful melody .Hollow mini-gourds beneath the keyboard amplify the sound.
Kevin Cabrera Sanchez, who lives in Virginia, was at the Folklife Festival representing his Guatemalan roots. The marimba is said to date back to the 1500s in Guatemala and in 1978 was declared the country’s national instrument.
Kevin Cabrera Sanchez plays the marimba at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.
Sanchez learned to play the marimba from a teacher who now lives in Guatemala and by watching videos. He doesn’t use sheet music —- “it’s very difficult to hold onto the music,” he says.
Like many musicians, he says that muscle memory is the key to his fast and fluid musicianship, with weeks of practice.
The xylophone-like instrument originated in Africa and crossed the ocean as enslaved peoples were brought to the Americas.
The wooden marimba is not your typical instrument, Sanchez adds. To keep it in tune, he says, the wooden keys must be shaved a bit.
The deft musical hands of 16-year-old Kevin Cabrera Sanchez play a tune on a Guatemalan marimba at the Folklife Festival. It’s the national instrument of Guatemala.
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Sanchez says he’s grateful to be at the event and excited to learn more about how different cultures represent themselves at the festival.
“I’m always open to new cultures,” says Sanchez. “It’s always interesting to learn how civilizations express themselves through art and music”
I ask for one more song and he gladly obliges, taking the music in his head and turning it into sweet and mellow notes that fill the Washington, D.C., air. “Do you want to be a musician?” I ask. The realist in him says that’s a difficult dream and he says he’s not sure he will pursue it. -K.T.
A kite is born
A giant kite is being born.
And it’s causing a bit of stress for Ubaldo Sanchez.
Ubaldo Sanchez is about to launch a traditional Guatemalan kite at the Folklife Festival.
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An artist from Guatemala who now lives in Virginia, he’s intently putting the finishing touches on a colorful, six-sided giant kite — a barrilete gigante — at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It’s about 5 feet by 5 feet and is emblazoned with the theme of the festival — “Indigenous Voices.” He’s painting 20 symbols to represent the Maya calendar and mark the 20th anniversary of the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum is depicted in the kite’s center as is the Smithsonian logo.
When I visit him in his festival tent, he is painting a bright red tree of life.
Sanchez came to the U.S. in the year 2000 at the age of 16.
This painting, “Dance of the Deer” by Ubaldo Sanchez, depicts a traditional Maya ceremony held before hunting deer. The characters in the painting are Sanchez’s grandfather (at left wearing the deer head); his young nephew Kevin Cabrera Sanchez (also in a deer costume) and Sanchez himself dressed as a jaguar.
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Recognized as a gifted young artist in his home country and then in his new American high school, he has gone on to make not only kites but murals, sculpture, pottery and paintings. President Barack Obama selected one of Sanchez’s paintings, New Dawn, a portrait of Obama, for the White House collection.
As Sanchez dips his brush in bright acrylic paints, he explains that in Guatemala, giant kites are flown on the Day of the Dead, November 1, to send love and support to community ancestors.
He does finish the kite before the festival closing hour of 5:30 p.m., but there aren’t enough skilled kite flyers to ensure a safe launch. “We really have to have seven or 10 people to hold it when the wind is strong,” he says. But he does send a smaller kite soaring into the skies.
At the Folklife Festival, Ubaldo Sanchez painted Maya symbols on a giant kite honoring the 20th anniversary of the National Museum of the American Indian. Its building is depicted in the center of the kite, which is being donated to its collection.
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Though he’s been in the U.S. for over 20 years, Sanchez says he maintains strong ties with his homeland. Earning his living by painting houses and doing his art as well, he’s set up a fund to provide scholarships for kids in Guatemala. In 2017, the government honored him with the presidential medal called the “La Orden del Quetzal” (the name of the national bird of Guatemala) for his art and his community service.
And if I may share a personal note: I see on Sanchez’s bio sheet that he went to the high school in Arlington, Va., where my wife, Marsha Dale, for years taught English as a Second Language to hundreds of students. They’d often write her notes at year’s end thanking her for helping them learn the language they needed to succeed in their new home and expressing gratitude that she insisted that they do their homework.
I ask if perhaps he was in her class.
Ubaldo Sanchez’s face lights up with a big grin: “I remember Miss Dale!” He says he wouldn’t have been able to do what he’s been doing without his English teachers, including my dear wife. -M.S.
When Marian Sherry Lurio and Jonathan Buffington Nguyen met at a mutual friend’s wedding at Higgins Lake, Mich., in July 2022, both felt an immediate chemistry. As the evening progressed, they sat on the shore of the lake in Adirondack chairs under the stars, where they had their first kiss before joining others for a midnight plunge.
The two learned that the following weekend Ms. Lurio planned to attend a wedding in Philadelphia, where Mr. Nguyen lives, and before they had even exchanged numbers, they already had a first date on the books.
“I have a vivid memory of after we first met,” Mr. Nguyen said, “just feeling like I really better not screw this up.”
Before long, they were commuting between Philadelphia and New York City, where Ms. Lurio lives, spending weekends and the odd remote work days in one another’s apartments in Philadelphia and Manhattan. Within the first six months of dating, Mr. Nguyen joined Ms. Lurio’s family for Thanksgiving in Villanova, Pa., and, the following month, she met his family in Beavercreek, Ohio, at a surprise birthday party for Mr. Nguyen’s mother.
Ms. Lurio, 32, who grew up in Merion Station outside Philadelphia, works in investor relations administration at Flexpoint Ford, a private equity firm. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology.
Mr. Nguyen, also 32, was born in Knoxville, Tenn., and raised in Beavercreek, Ohio, from the age of 7. He graduated from Haverford College with a bachelor’s degree in political science and is now a director at Doyle Real Estate Advisors in Philadelphia.
Their long-distance relationship continued for the next few years. There were dates in Manhattan, vacations and beach trips to the Jersey Shore. They attended sporting events and discovered their shared appreciation of the 2003 film, “Love Actually.”
One evening, Mr. Nguyen recalled looking around Ms. Lurio’s small New York studio — strewed with clothes and the takeout meal they had ordered — and feeling “so comfortable and safe.” “I knew that this was something different than just sort of a fling,” he said.
It was an open question when they would move in together. In 2024, Ms. Lurio began the process of moving into Mr. Nguyen’s home in Philadelphia — even bringing her cat, Scott — but her plans changed midway when an opportunity arose to expand her role with her current employer.
Mr. Nguyen was on board with her decision. “It almost feels like stolen valor to call it ‘long distance,’ because it’s so easy from Philadelphia to New York,” Mr. Nguyen said. “The joke is, it’s easier to get to Philly from New York than to get to some parts of Brooklyn from Manhattan, right?”
In January 2025, Mr. Nguyen visited Ms. Lurio in New York with more up his sleeve than spending the weekend. Together they had discussed marriage and bespoke rings, but when Mr. Nguyen left Ms. Lurio and an unfinished cheese plate at the bar of the Chelsea Hotel that Friday evening, she had no idea what was coming next.
“I remember texting Jonathan,” Ms. Lurio said, bewildered: “‘You didn’t go toward the bathroom!’” When a Lobby Bar server came and asked her to come outside, Ms. Lurio still didn’t realize what was happening until she was standing in the hallway, where Mr. Nguyen stood recreating a key moment from the film “Love Actually,” in which one character silently professes his love for another in writing by flashing a series of cue cards. There, in the storied Chelsea Hotel hallway still festooned with Christmas decorations, Mr. Nguyen shared his last card that said, “Will you marry me?”
They wed on April 11 in front of 200 guests at the Pump House, a covered space on the banks of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River. Mr. Nguyen’s sister, the Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, who is ordained through the Unitarian Universalist Association, officiated.
Although formal attire was suggested, Ms. Lurio said that the ceremony was “pretty casual.” She and Jonathan got ready together, and their families served as their wedding parties.
“I said I wanted a five-minute wedding,” Ms. Lurio recalled, though the ceremony ended up lasting a little longer than that. During the ceremony, Ms. Nguyen read a homily and jokingly added that guests should not ask the bride and groom about their living arrangements, which will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
While watching Ms. Lurio walk down the aisle, flanked by her parents, Mr. Nguyen said he remembered feeling at once grounded in the moment and also a sense of dazed joy: “Like, is this real? I felt very lucky in that moment — and also just excited for the party to start!”
He always texted when he was outside. No call, no knock. It was just a message and then the soft sound of my door opening. He moved like someone practiced in disappearing.
His name meant “complete” in Arabic, which is what I felt when we were together.
I met him the way you meet most things that matter in Los Angeles — without intending to. In our senior year at a college in eastern L.A. County, we were introduced through mutual friends, then thrown together by the particular gravity of people who recognized something in each other. He was a Muslim medical student, conservative and careful and funny in the dry, precise way of someone who has always had to choose his words. I was loud where he was quiet, messy where he was disciplined. I was out. He was not.
I understood, or thought I did. I thought that I couldn’t get hurt if I was completely conscious throughout the endeavor. Los Angeles has a way of making you feel like the whole world shares your freedoms — until you realize the city is enormous, and not all of it belongs to you in the same way.
For months, our world was confined to my apartment. He would slip in after dark, and we’d stay up late talking about his family in Iran, classical music and the particular pressure of being the son someone sacrificed everything to bring here. He told me things he said he’d never told anyone, and I believed him.
The orange glow from my Nesso lamp lit his face while the indigo sky pressed against the window behind him. In our small little world, we were safe. Outside was another matter.
On our first real date, I took him to the L.A. Phil’s “An Evening of Film & Music: From Mexico to Hollywood” program. I told him they were cheap seats even though they were the first row on the terrace. He was thrilled in the way only someone who doesn’t expect to be delighted actually gets delighted — fully, without guarding it. I put my arm around his shoulders. At some point, I shifted and moved it, and he nudged it back. He was OK with PDA here.
I remember thinking that wealth is a great barrier to harm and then feeling silly for extrapolating my own experience once again. Inside Walt Disney Concert Hall, we were just two people in love with the same music.
Outside was still another matter.
In February, on Valentine’s Day, he took me to a Yemeni restaurant in Anaheim. We hovered over saffron tea surrounded by other young Southern Californians, and we looked like friends. Before we went in, we sat in the parking lot of the strip mall — signs in Arabic advertising bread, coffee, halal meats, the Little Arabia District — hand in hand. I leaned over to kiss him.
“Not here,” he said. His eyes shifted furtively. “Someone might see.”
I understood, or told myself I did, but I was saddened. Later, after the kind of reflection that only arrives in the wreckage, I would understand something harder: I had been unconsciously asking him to choose, over and over, between the people he loved and the person he loved. I had a long pattern of choosing unavailable men, telling myself it was because I could handle the complexity. The truth was more embarrassing. I thought that if someone like him chose me anyway — chose me over the weight of societal expectations — it would mean I was worth choosing. It took me a long time to see how unfair that was to him and to me.
We went to the Norton Simon Museum together in November, on the kind of gray Pasadena day when the 210 Freeway roars in the background like white noise. He studied for the MCAT while I wrote a paper on Persian rugs. In between practice problems, he translated ancient Arabic scripts for me. I thought, “We make a good team.” Afterward, we walked through the galleries and he didn’t let go of my arm.
That was the version of us I kept returning to — when the ending came during Ramadan. It arrived as a spiritual reflection of my own. I texted: “Does this end at graduation — whatever we are doing?”
He thought I meant Ramadan. I did not mean Ramadan.
“I care about you,” he wrote, “but I don’t want you to think this could work out to anything more than just dating. I mean, of course, I’ve fantasized about marrying you. If I could live my life the way I wanted, of course I would continue. I’m just sad it’s not in this lifetime.”
I was in Mexico City when these texts were exchanged. That night I flew to Oaxaca to clear my head and then, after less than 24 hours, flew back to L.A. No amount of vacation would allow me to process what had just happened, so I threw myself back into work.
My therapist told me to use the conjunction “and” instead of “but.” It happened, and I am changed. The harm I caused and the love I felt. The beauty of what we made and the impossibility of where it could go. She gave me a knowing smile when I asked if it would stay with me forever. She didn’t answer, which was the answer.
I think about the freeways now, the way Joan Didion called them our only secular communion. When you’re on the ground in Los Angeles, the world narrows to the few blocks around you. Get on the freeway and you understand the whole body of the city at once: the arteries, the pulse, the scale of the thing.
You understand that you are a single cell in something enormous and moving. It is all out of your control. I am in a lane. The lane shaped how I drive. He was simply in a different lane, and his lane shaped him, and those two facts can coexist without either of us being the villain of the sad story.
He came like a secret in the night, and he left the same way. What we made in between was real and complicated and mine to hold forever, hoping we find each other in the next life.
The author lives in Los Angeles.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.
When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.
Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.
“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.
Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.
The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.
Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”
Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.
Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.
Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.
More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.
The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.
“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”
Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”
Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”
True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.
“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”
Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.
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