Rethinking “Empty” Spaces: Jessica Lopez Lyman on Place-Keeping in the Twin Cities

In neighborhoods often dismissed as empty or vacant, Latina/x artists are using their creativity to fight back. Through powerful acts of art, these artists are reclaiming space, culture, and community. Jessica Lopez Lyman, an assistant professor of Chicano and Latino studies, shines a spotlight on these artists and the anti-gentrification movement to preserve these places people call home. 

Lopez Lyman is a 2025 recipient of the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship. The goal of this award is to advance the careers of assistant professors at a crucial point in their professional lives. Recipients hold the award for two years. 

Lopez Lyman’s pivotal career work is her book, Place-Keepers, coming out on November 18, which examines the intersection of art and activism. The book explores how Latina/x artists in the Twin Cities use their art as a form of activism to reclaim spaces. It also delves into anti-gentrification movements.

The award allows her to organize a thoughtful book launch in South Minneapolis, a place connected to her research. It’s important to her that the work she’s done within the community is celebrated and shared in those same spaces. 

Lopez Lyman grew up in St. Paul and lived in South Minneapolis for over a decade. She earned her PhD in Chicana and Chicano Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

She returned to work at the University of Minnesota because its Chicano and Latino studies department is the first and only of its kind in the Midwest, she says. St. Paul has greatly influenced her understanding of solidarity within communities.

Place-keeping

A lot of her work centers on the West Side of St. Paul, a historic Mexican and Chicano neighborhood, as well as South Minneapolis neighborhoods such as Powderhorn. As both an artist and organizer, she is deeply involved with the communities featured in her book.

She runs a mobile screen printing cart called La Luchadora, meaning “the fighter.” People can print custom poster designs that inspire thoughtful dialogue around community challenges, values, and aspirations. 

Placemaking projects are ways to rethink how certain public spaces contribute to a city. It’s popular in government as a way to activate places they consider to be empty or vacant space, Lopez Lyman says. 

“The problem with this idea, first and foremost, is that we have to all understand that we’re on occupied Dakota land here in Minneapolis,” Lopez Lyman says. “Just to assume any spaces are just vacant or empty is illogical.”

Lopez Lyman says she feels that the intention of placemaking is positive, but the results don’t match that intention.

It’s more than just a lost space, she says.

Fellow artists and organizers aren’t focused on placemaking but rather on place-keeping—a concept centered on preserving the cultural identity of neighborhoods in the Twin Cities, she says. Place-keeping aims to ensure that long-standing residents can continue to live in the communities their families may have called home for generations.

Art as activism

Lopez Lyman studies how public performances like poetry and dancing play a role in activism.

“In our field, we really understand the art [and] the aesthetics is integral to everything that we do,” she says. “And they are not separate. And so when we talk about community mobilization [and] community organizing, we have used imagery.”

One of the artists Lopez Lyman features in her book is Representative María Isa Pérez-Vega, DFL, an artist trained in contemporary hip-hop and Puerto Rican bomba. She has owned her own record label for more than 15 years. She also received the Rising Latina Star award from the National Hispana Leadership Institute for her work on advocating for and educating incarcerated youths across Minnesota.

She also highlights the work of poets such as Teresa Ortiz and Lupe Castillo, co-founders of Palabristas, a collective of poets and spoken word artists of Latina/x heritage.

The use of art in activism is integral, she says. 

“They’re not just adding the aesthetics accouterments to a social movement; they are deeply embedded in the movements,” Lopez Lyman says. “Their art is part of cultural organizing, which shifts the discourse. It shifts the imagery and it shifts how we tell stories.”

She researches how Latina/x’s participated in fighting against police brutality prior to the murder of George Floyd, as well as anti-gentrification efforts and the pipeline protests in northern Minnesota.

Art and activism in the classroom

Lopez Lyman teaches classes such as Introduction to Latino Studies, Latino Social Movements, and From Selena to Bad Bunny, a class that explores power and resistance in music. 

While traditional readings and texts are important, incorporating art and imagery into her classes creates additional ways for students to engage and connect with the material, she says. 

“And that’s always my hope as a teacher, is that regardless of whether this is your major or minor or this will be the only class you ever take, that you see yourself reflected in this work,” Lopez Lyman says. “Because ultimately, Chicano [and] Latino studies is about the liberation of all people.” 

The book launch is December 12, 2025, at El Colegio High School in South Minneapolis.

This story was written by Lulu Jaeckel, an undergraduate student in CLA.