
Artist Alfonso Pérez Acosta paints a work for the 2022 Viva RVA! festival, set for Saturday, Oct. 1, at Diversity Richmond. The piece will be unveiled Friday, Sept. 16, during the opening of Crossroads Art Center’s LGBTQ+ exhibition “Love Happens Here.” (Photo courtesy Alfonso Pérez Acosta)
In 2019, Diversity Richmond hosted its first Viva RVA! celebration, commemorating Hispanic Heritage Month and LGBTQ+ Pride. With a goal of welcoming 500 people to Diversity’s 1407 Sherwood Ave. location, the event exceeded expectations with 700 attendees. But no one could have prepared for the pandemic. What was founded as a music and cultural festival morphed to coordinating food drives in collaboration with Feed More and partnering with the Virginia Department of Health to host COVID-19 testing and vaccination clinics. In 2021, Viva RVA! organizers worked with Richmond’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Engagement and the Office of Minority Business Development to host a 15-week Latino Entrepreneurship Academy, during which participants learned from business owners and financial experts in Spanish. This year will see a return to the traditional event, with music, dance and food, plus a new focus — art.
Artist Alfonso Pérez Acosta created a painting for this year’s Viva RVA! festival, which will be held on Saturday, Oct. 1, at Diversity Richmond. The artwork depicts members of the Latino LGBTQ+ community and their allies in an embrace, a theme for this year’s celebration.
“I’m always trying to find ways of showing certain concepts, like empathy or togetherness, with body language … and pretty quickly the idea of people hugging came up,” Pérez Acosta says. “I feel that it really represents what Viva RVA! wants to share with everyone this year, but it’s also talking a lot more about what we might need in this moment as a city, as people, as humanity, to heal.”
Founder and director of Viva RVA! Fernando Rodríguez says the focus on art this year reflects a desire to showcase that cultural component during the event, offering commemorative posters (prints of Pérez Acosta’s painting will be available during the event), as well as raising funds through an art exhibition at Crossroads Art Center.
“Hispanics are very drawn to art,” Rodríguez says. “We’re very colorful, we love murals, we love painting, we love museums and everything that can reflect our culture.”
Pérez Acosta’s original piece will be unveiled during the opening of Crossroads Art Center’s LGBTQ+ exhibition “Love Happens Here,” on view from Sept. 16-Nov. 6. A silent auction will be held Friday, Sept. 16, starting at 5 p.m. at the gallery’s 2016 Staples Mill Road location. All proceeds will benefit Viva RVA! programs, including food drives and the Latino Entrepreneurship Academy.
Among the models who posed for Pérez Acosta’s artwork are Scott and Rodney Moubray-Carrico. Though the two are not Latino, they’re very much tied to the culture and community. They adopted their son, Lucas (also featured in the painting), from Guatemala when he was 1 year old (he’s now 14) and often return to the country. Residents of Richmond since 2018, at the time of Lucas’ adoption, Scott and Rodney were living in Indiana and navigated a complicated adoption process to both be recognized as a father to Lucas. As longtime advocates for marriage equality and family rights, they agree progress has been made but recognize there’s still a long way to go.
“[It’s] the differences in culture and seeing that as a benefit,” Scott says. “Too many people look at differences [negatively] instead of what you can take away from it and learn from. … I hope people take advantage of [Viva RVA!] and come out and enjoy it and see the joy that everyone has there so it removes the fear from the difference and the fear of the ‘other,’ if you will.”
Viva RVA! promotes visibility and education, but it’s also a family-friendly party with free admission from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Food trucks, vendors and exhibitors will be available, and performers include bomba, plena and salsa band Kadencia; Puerto Rican folk dance group Tradición; and Brazilian quartet Quatro na Bossa.
“We’re able to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with this cultural party and celebration of music, language, food and art,” Rodríguez says, “and in addition, we’re also celebrating all of the accomplishments of the LGBTQ community that are Hispanic and Latino to Richmond and to the region, so it’s a two for one.”