The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 14, 2026

A color lithograph diptych is vertically oriented. The top panel has an arched top and displays blue and red Spanish newsprint layered with stars. Centered is a photograph of a girl with a light skin tone in a ruffled blue dress framed by a green arch. A thin blue line connects to the lower rectangular panel of gray newsprint, where a large, jagged, rust-colored starburst shape sits at the base.

Life Is a Parade

1998

Juan Sánchez

(American, b. 1954)
publisher

Tamarind Institute

America
color lithograph, diptych
Overall: 127 x 76.5 cm (50 x 30 1/8 in.)
Gift of Jack and Linda Lissauer in Honor of Susan and Dean Trilling 2024.48
© Juan Sánchez
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

This print is one of several that Juan Sánchez created in collaboration with Tamarind Institute, a print publisher in New Mexico.

Description

Born in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican immigrants, Juan Sánchez explores his cultural heritage throughout his artistic practice. This print uses imagery related to Puerto Rican Day parades to consider the challenges and struggles Puerto Ricans faced upon relocating to the United States, alongside iconography—such as the upside-down palm tree—that references Puerto Rico’s history. Of the print, the artist wrote that he “wish[es] for the viewer to feel . . . the extent of my people’s anguish as well as their prevailing joys.”
  • {{cite web|title=Life Is a Parade|url=false|author=Juan Sánchez, Tamarind Institute|year=1998|access-date=14 September 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2024.48