An East Somerville laundromat transforms into an artwork gallery

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Cambridge-based photographer Mario Quiroz has dreamed of seeing his work inside a laundromat.

At City Line Laundromat in East Somerville, domestically generally known as “la lavandería de la Broadway,” his dream is now a actuality.

“It’s a collective living room,” stated Quiroz of the East Somerville laundromat. “If you ask me to choose between showing this work at the laundromat or as a solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I definitely will choose the laundromat.”

Quiroz’s exhibit “Re UNIDOS: Pasado Presente y Futuro/Past, Present & Future” is a group of images and audio interviews documenting Unidos, the Ok-8 twin language program at East Somerville Community School (ESCS) for English and Spanish learners. The images might be on view from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Quiroz grew up in El Salvador and moved to the United States in 1999, and acquired his bachelor’s and MFA from Lesley University in 2015 and 2017.

For the previous twenty years, Quiroz has documented the lives of many New England immigrants. His 24 tasks embody collaborations with Fitchburg’s Latino communities, Massachusetts’ domestic workers and members of Padres Latinos in Somerville, a group assist group for Spanish-speaking Latino mother and father in Somerville. He hopes to make use of his artwork as a automobile for social change.

“My practice is for the people, by the people,” he stated. “My practice is community-based, which means that I always work with a community partner.”

By day, Quiroz is a pre-Ok educator at ESCS, the place he’s generally known as “Mr. Mario.” For the images challenge, Quiroz labored intently with Analiese Reigstad, the dual-language program specialist on the college.

Reigstad realized there wasn’t a lot data on Unidos’ 26-year historical past obtainable on-line. The program commissioned Quiroz to doc “a day in the life” of the scholars and educators.

From May to June of this 12 months, Quiroz photographed college students, educators and employees on the college together with his 35mm movie digital camera and signature black-and-white movie inventory. He would seize pictures in the course of the day of pupil life, develop and scan the pictures at house, then present them to the ESCS group within the following days.

“We went to some classrooms and would just unfurl it and tell students about the process and ask for their perspectives and how it made them feel or what they noticed about it,” stated Reigstad.

East Somerville is among the metropolis’s most racially numerous neighborhoods; 35% of its residents are immigrants, a lot of whom come from El Salvador and Central America. The Unidos program at ESCS at the moment enrolls 370 college students, and 283 reported their house language as Spanish, in response to Reigstad.

“When you look back at history, all the bad things happen to people that don’t have access to money, access to power,” stated Quiroz. “And it’s even worse when you don’t have language access.”

At the opening reception on Wednesday afternoon, ESCS employees, college students and oldsters gathered with laundromat prospects and Somerville Mayor Jake Wilson. Visitors rotated across the room to gaze on the six giant cloth sheets hanging from the ceiling. Each sheet displayed a grid of 12 of Quiroz’s black-and-white images, alongside a QR code linking to audio interviews with the ESCS group.

Included in one of many images is Sonia Conde’s son, who’s a sixth grader at ESCS. Conde works for the town’s Office of Housing Stability and is initially from Peru. She transferred her son to ESCS when he was in first grade, after he attended a predominantly white afterschool program. She stated one thing in her son modified that summer season.

“He said, ‘Mom, I am so happy. I met moms like you who speak two languages, and I met kids who also speak Spanish,’” stated Conde.

Conde and Quiroz stated that the sensation of belonging has been troublesome for immigrants in East Somerville. Quiroz cited the development of McGrath Highway, which razed homes and remoted the neighborhood within the Nineteen Fifties. In latest years, the cost of housing has soared, making it onerous for a few of Conde’s neighbors to remain within the metropolis.

In 2025 and 2026, Conde witnessed ICE enter the neighborhood and break up households. As a outcome, she sees much less individuals use public areas like City Line Laundromat – although she nonetheless endearingly calls it a “Latino living room.”

“My hope is that families who go there don’t feel alone, don’t feel that they are in a different land, that they are part of Somerville,” she stated. “We can be together in this room. We belong here. We can move forward together. That’s my ultimate dream.”