Destiny Santana knows exactly why she loves art.
“Art for me is expression,” she said.
She saw that expression all around her growing up in Harlem.
“I grew up in the best city in the world in the best neighborhood of that city,” she said proudly.
Her childhood was a cascade of bold colors and expression that lives through her work today as an artist. It is a body of work that is imbued with a captivating sense of movement that positioned her perfectly to convey the movement and sense of joy and expression so many associate with the game of soccer. It is also why she is so proud to unveil her scarf design for New York City FC’s upcoming Noche Latina match on September 18 against the Philadelphia Union.
“It was fun for me to put myself out there and put myself in a space that I'm not familiar with [in soccer] and watch,” she said. “I thought it was cool to be able to do that and now I'm knowledgeable!”
Art and dance were cornerstones of Destiny’s childhood in Harlem and were represented in countless interesting and unique ways.
“Dance was my first love and my introduction into art,” she said.
Whether it was dancing on the corner with friends, on stage at the Apollo Theatre, or the graffiti art on the subway trains, Destiny found inspiration in what was around her. Art spoke to her. One of seven children, her mother fled Cuba at a young age to start a new life in America.
“My mom didn't really let me go on the trains - she said I had to stay within a four-block radius,” she explained.
“I had older sisters, who had older friends, who had younger siblings. When they would decide to take us to M&M World, or Hershey World, those would be the times I could take advantage of going on the train and that’s when I would see the graffiti.
“I would be like, what is all this? I was confused. I was shocked. Is this like an art gallery underground that I didn't know about? That's when I first fell in love. I remember being a kid on the train and looking at all the graffiti and saying, ‘I want to do that’.”
Destiny began sketching her name in different fonts. She still has those early sketches and she can trace the influence of that early exposure to art on the subway in the work she does now – which she defines as abstract cubism – viewing her body of work as a chronicle of her life.
“There's a timeline with art,” she said. “One second a piece means the world to you, and the next second it’s like, I healed. Each piece is a testimony to my journey.”
Destiny’s journey is a tapestry woven with joyful expression, but also perseverance. She possesses a vibrant soul brimming with creativity, but those artistic ambitions did not always mesh well with her mother’s wishes.
As a teenager, Destiny was accepted to Repertory Company High School for Theatre Arts on 43rd Street in Manhattan. The school was some distance from the one her mother envisioned her attending near the family home in Harlem.
It was only after an impassioned plea - alongside her twin sister - that Destiny was allowed to attend the school she wanted.
"I got on my knees, my twin sister got on her knees and we begged," she said. "Because we went to a middle school in the corner of the block, so my mom was like you're going to go to high school there too. She let me go and that's when my life changed."
A greater struggle, however, would arrive later on. Destiny’s college experience was brief – around a semester – and would be followed by couch surfing amid a tense relationship with her mother and a burgeoning career as an artist inspired by a high school friend who encouraged her to keep drawing. It is a struggle that she feels is present in the work she was producing at the time.
“My first project was called ‘Shadow Work’,” she said “You can see the shadow and the light, and you can see the darkness in the faces and, but you can also see, the enlightening stuff. It’s a reflection of my life, you know, it's dark and light, and I wear that on my heart. I am not ashamed of my book.”
That pride in her story is why Destiny was so excited to collaborate with New York City FC. It has allowed her to convey the complexity and nuance of the Afro-Latino & Afro-Carribean culture she is both proud of and also still exploring - turning the page and sharing another part of herself with the world.
“Being an Afro-Latina, being Afro-Caribbean, there are so many distinctive terms that kind of box you in,” she said. “Being able to paint and being able to paint the hues that I grew up seeing - the dark-skinned browns, the reds, being able to really highlight that, and then being able to highlight the spirituality of my culture [is wonderful]. If my mom was to see it, she'd be like, ‘Wow, this is a homage to our heritage’.
“With the scarf, you see the different patches on the face, you see the different shades on the face because I want to unite. We're all the same. We have so many different stories, and as soon as we start to acknowledge and recognize those stories we can move past just the box of being a Latino or being Latinx, or being this.
“There are so many different ways of compartmentalizing things that have been created for people to feel more comfortable with who we are, and I’m done with that.”
Her process for designing the scarf involved studying Cuban soccer players and aligning herself with her culture through a new lens – that of soccer.
It ultimately led to the design we see before us, with Destiny excited to give away a piece of herself in the form of expression – the threads of the scarf intertwining to represent the vulnerability and joy that continues to define her work as an artist.
“I think that's the beauty of it,” she said. “Once I'm done with the painting, it's like my heart has been spilled over. I think it's beautiful that people could take little pieces of my heart and keep them and cherish them.”
