OKLAHOMA CITY – Latino-focused visual arts showcase Herencia has returned for 2026, but this time, it’s thinking outside the traditional gallery setup and inviting visitors into a fully immersive, culturally celebratory space of overlapping dreams with “Beyond El Sueño.”
Launched by OKC-based artist/photographer Sharik Cervantes, Herencia has become an annual group art show for Hispanic and Latino artists of all kinds – from painters and sculptors to photographers and even low-rider customizers – taking over spaces from The Plaza to the Calle Dos Cinco to create pop-up, museum-like galleries.
But amid the ongoing struggles and challenges of America’s Hispanic community in 2026, Cervantes decided to reframe things this time, to shift the experience from observing and appreciating art in a gallery to instead stepping into it and feeling the deepest dreams and beauties of the culture.
“The whole thing is asking ‘what is a dream?’ to everyone individually,” Cervantes told Free Press, “but also ‘what was that dream for our ancestors?’”
In addition to Cervantes herself, the featured group of boundary-pushing visual artists this time includes Nayelly Morales Rojo, bien.chillona, Jaiye Farrel, Saray Surez, and Toro.
Meaning “beyond the dream,” “Beyond El Sueño” became a place for the artists to explore their own dreams-made-reality inside 1984 Studios.
For some, that task took the form of a surrealist, colorful fever dream focused on ineffable beauty or abstract iconography. For others, it was the dream of a simpler past and a smaller world.
“For every artist, I just gave them that question of ‘what is the dream for you, and what does that mean for you?’” Cervantes said. “And everybody kind of just took their own turn to what that looks like, whether that’s the good dreams or the bad dreams.”
The result is a single, open immersive art space that allows each of the artists’ dreams to spill over into one another, with a child’s bedroom overlapping with a neon-lined paper tree that rises to a ceiling filled with party decorations and colored foil streamers.
A charmingly messy and endearingly cozy book-filled reading nook is overlaid with static and splashes of digitized color from a projector as a vein of multicolored LEDs snakes throughout across the floor.
But all of the disparate and diverse imagery and immersive elements are pulled from the inner dreams of the artists themselves and from the icons and aesthetics of their own deep cultures and heritage, paying tribute not only to their imaginations, but their histories.
Artist Nayelly Morales Rojo’s dream is a comforting one of her own past, recreating her childhood bedroom and even incorporating her real home videos of her earliest years.
“It’s really sentimental because I get to see not only where my mom comes from, but also experience firsthand how life was back then,” Morales Rojo told Free Press. “And I get to see a lot of my loved ones that have passed on, and get that nostalgic feeling of family and the importance of remembering our loved ones and embracing our future.”
“Beyond El Sueño,” presented by Herencia, runs now through Saturday, October 10th at 1984 Studios in Oklahoma City
For more, follow @herencia.okc on Instagram.
Brett Fieldcamp is the owner and Editor in Chief of Oklahoma City Free Press. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly two decades and served as Arts & Entertainment Editor before purchasing the company from founder Brett Dickerson in 2026.
He is also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
