In Stories from Within: Home, Here and There, artist Leticia Pardo gathers registers of domestic space through different media, forming a visual and auditory archive in which narratives and architectural fragments reflect on spaces—real and imagined, present and longed for—that anchor a sense of home. The project examines how migration and displacement reshape the built environment and how memory and adaptation endure across transnational contexts. Rooted in Pardo’s broader research on architecture within Mexican communities in the Midwest, the work traces how home is carried, reconfigured, and continually rebuilt across borders.

Leticia Pardo is a multidisciplinary artist and architect from Mexico City, based in Chicago. Her practice, which sits at the intersection between architecture, research and art, critically observes how belonging is constructed and how migration, political borders, and other colonial power dynamics manifest in the built environment. Through different methodologies of documentation, architectural, and sculptural, she explores the personal and political layers interwoven within the architectures that shape us socially—scaling from the domestic to the territorial. Her work has been shown at the São Paulo Architecture Biennial, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, The NonStndrd, SITE Galleries, Hyde Park Art Center, the Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos in Mexico City, among others. Pardo is an assistant professor of architecture at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a recipient of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte from the Ministry of Culture in Mexico.

Mariela Acuña is an art administrator and curator from San José, Costa Rica. As director of exhibitions and residency at Hyde Park Art Center she oversees the center's exhibitions program, the Jackman Goldwasser Residency, and the micro-publishing platform Green Lantern Press. Through her administrative and curatorial practice, Acuña champions the work of social practice and underrepresented artists in Chicago and supports transnational connections for artists and curators. Mariela holds a Bachelor of Art in art history, a Bachelor of Fine Art in sculpture from Florida Atlantic University, and a dual Master of Art in art administration and public policy and art history, theory, and criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She serves as board president of Comfort Station, an artist-run micro-cultural center that activates a historic building with free programs at the intersection of art and life.

Hyde Park Art Center’s mission is to stimulate and sustain the visual arts in Chicago. As a home for creativity and community, the Art Center serves multiple purposes: it is a gathering space for artists and the larger community to engage with one another through free arts events; it is a learning hub for visual artists of all ages to develop art-making skills; it is a studio space for local, national, and international professional artists to deepen and develop their craft in Chicago; and it is an exhibition hall showcasing the talent of exceptional Chicago visual artists. Most of all, it is an artistic home for the community it serves. The Art Center has been a leader in advancing contemporary visual art in Chicago since 1939. Founded as part of the New Deal by a group of artists, the Art Center began offering art classes in 1940.