Luz Palou García’s Fantastical Creatures

Last year, Luz Palou García, A26 (BFA), donned a colorful pom-pom-covered monster suit and headed out into the city. 

Her tufted creature turned heads as it waited at a crosswalk, admired flowers in the Public Garden, and rode the subway. While delight was her goal, walking the streets in a surreal skin also mirrored her experience as an immigrant—perpetually incongruous and othered. 

García’s vision was to bring to life the Mexican folk-art tradition of alebrijes, sculptures that combine horns, fins, tails and other features of various animals into uniquely fanciful creatures. Painted with tiny dots and designs in lively colors, they seem to radiate joy. 

Typically, alebrijes are static things, carved from wood or crafted from paper-mâché. But García channeled their vibrant energy into something she could wear into the world.

She expanded that vision for her senior thesis project this spring, when she recruited four friends to dress as alebrijes and perform around an 8-foot-tall paper-mâché monster head she created. Her message is that we can still laugh and be vulnerable with each other, even in troubled times. 

Why dress as a colorful monster to represent the immigrant experience?

Going out in Boston and interacting with these spaces that I’ve known, I wanted to externalize the feelings I have of being alien, but in a way that’s also joyful, because I’ve always been someone who tries to have fun. I realized that no matter where I was, I had to just accept that I was going to feel different and it was going to be okay. 

Why pom-poms?

In first grade, I lived in this very small town in New Hampshire. I was the first immigrant kid they ever had, and a lot of the teachers didn’t really understand what to do with me. So they put me in front of this loom they had, and I started weaving. Then I joined a knitting club, and that’s really how I started to connect with people. We would knit hats for babies and make little pom-poms. That was my first introduction to pom-poms. 

Pom-poms have a very rich history of Indigenous practice in Mexico. That they can be made small and then built up into something bigger is appealing to me, and practical, because it’s easy to bring yarn with me wherever I go.

I have around 4,000 pom-poms for this project. My mom’s a high school teacher and her students have been excited to help make them. It’s been a way to bring people into my process, for them to make something tangible and easy and grounding while learning about Mexican art. 

Why did you create masks for your alebrijes?

In rural Mexican towns, masks play a deep role in expressing emotions; when people perform with masks, it’s a form of joyful resistance to Eurocentric standards. 

When I lived in Mexico, we had this big wall in our house that was covered with masks from all over the country. We actually sold those masks in order to have enough money to move to the U.S. They helped protect us in a way.

I do see these suits and masks as kind of like armor; it still invites you in but allows me to perform and express myself without the need for the audience to know exactly who I am. 

For her senior thesis this year, García recruited four friends to dress as her version of alebrijes, mythical creatures that are considered spirit guides or protectors in Mexican tradition. Photo: William Clark Casey, A24 (BFA)

You say the project offers a reminder that we’re deeply interconnected, even in silence.

I see the monsters as emotional creatures you can interact with, but silently, because the immigrant experience is a very invisible, silent experience in many ways. You find a way to process it all by yourself. 

I understand that other people also have things that make them feel alien or othered. I don’t always think we feel comfortable to speak it, but we can know it by being weird and being soft.

I can see how wearing a monster suit counts as weird. But what do you mean by soft?

The ability to be vulnerable with the people around you. In our generation, I think there’s a lot of emphasis on being nonchalant, trying your very hardest to pretend that things don’t bother you. It’s very exhausting to be in those spaces. All I ever want is to be vulnerable, and to be soft, and to hug people, and to be able to laugh about things. Being able to live by that has helped me to feel I can connect with more people, and feel more like myself.