A ChicagoRican Story: Carlos Flores

Carlos Flores: A ChicagoRican Story — Images of Community, Memory, and Resistance explores more than five decades of Chicago history through the extraordinary life, photography, and cultural work of Carlos Flores.

This is a Puerto Rican story, but it is not only a Puerto Rican story.

Carlos Flores's journey intersects with the histories of Black and Latino Chicago, migration and displacement, neighborhood transformation, music and cultural exchange, civil rights and community activism, and generations of people who have struggled to create a place for themselves in this city.

To be ChicagoRican is to inhabit more than one place, history, and cultural identity at once. Through Carlos's story, the exhibition invites Puerto Ricans, Latinos, Black Chicagoans, immigrants, artists, activists, longtime residents, new generations, and visitors from every background to consider a larger question:

How do we create community, preserve memory, and claim belonging in a city that is constantly changing?