Support WBUR
An East Somerville laundromat transforms into an art gallery
Editor's note: This story is an excerpt from WBUR's weekly arts and culture newsletter, The ARTery. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
Cambridge-based photographer Mario Quiroz has dreamed of seeing his work inside a laundromat.
At City Line Laundromat in East Somerville, locally known as “la lavandería de la Broadway,” his dream is now a reality.
“It’s a collective living room,” said Quiroz. “If you ask me to choose between showing this work at the laundromat or as a solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I definitely will choose the laundromat.”
Quiroz’s exhibit “Re UNIDOS: Pasado Presente y Futuro/Past, Present & Future” is a collection of photographs and audio interviews documenting Unidos, the K-8 dual language program at East Somerville Community School (ESCS) for English and Spanish learners. The photographs will be on view from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.
Quiroz grew up in El Salvador and moved to the United States in 1999, and received his bachelor’s and MFA from Lesley University in 2015 and 2017.
For the past two decades, Quiroz has documented the lives of many New England immigrants. His 24 projects include collaborations with Fitchburg’s Latino communities, Massachusetts’ domestic workers and members of Padres Latinos in Somerville, a community support group for Spanish-speaking Latino parents in Somerville. He hopes to use his art as a vehicle for social change.
“My practice is for the people, by the people,” he said. “My practice is community-based, which means that I always work with a community partner.”
By day, Quiroz is a pre-K educator at ESCS, where he’s known as “Mr. Mario.” For the photography project, Quiroz worked closely with Analiese Reigstad, the dual-language program specialist at the school.
Reigstad realized there wasn’t much information on Unidos’ 26-year history available online. The program commissioned Quiroz to document “a day in the life” of the students and educators.
From May to June of this year, Quiroz photographed students, educators and staff at the school with his 35mm film camera and signature black-and-white film stock. He would capture photos during the day of student life, develop and scan the photos at home, then show them to the ESCS community in the following days.
“We went to some classrooms and would just unfurl it and tell students about the process and ask for their perspectives and how it made them feel or what they noticed about it,” said Reigstad.
East Somerville is one of the city's most racially diverse neighborhoods; 35% of its residents are immigrants, many of whom come from El Salvador and Central America. The Unidos program at ESCS currently enrolls 370 students, and 283 reported their home language as Spanish, according to Reigstad.
“When you look back at history, all the bad things happen to people that don't have access to money, access to power,” said Quiroz. “And it's even worse when you don't have language access.”
At the opening reception on Wednesday afternoon, ESCS staff, students and parents gathered with laundromat customers and Somerville Mayor Jake Wilson. Visitors rotated around the room to gaze at the six large fabric sheets hanging from the ceiling. Each sheet displayed a grid of 12 of Quiroz’s black-and-white photographs, alongside a QR code linking to audio interviews with the ESCS community.
Included in one of the photographs is Sonia Conde’s son, who is a sixth grader at ESCS. Conde works for the city’s Office of Housing Stability and is originally from Peru. She transferred her son to ESCS when he was in first grade, after he attended a predominantly white afterschool program. She said something in her son changed that summer.
“He said, ‘Mom, I am so happy. I met moms like you who speak two languages, and I met kids who also speak Spanish,’” said Conde.
Conde and Quiroz said that the feeling of belonging has been difficult for immigrants in East Somerville. Quiroz cited the construction of McGrath Highway, which razed houses and isolated the neighborhood in the 1950s. In recent years, the cost of housing has soared, making it hard for some of Conde’s neighbors to stay in the city.
In 2025 and 2026, Conde witnessed ICE enter the neighborhood and break up families. As a result, she sees less people use public spaces like City Line Laundromat – though she still endearingly calls it a “Latino living room.”
“My hope is that families who go there don't feel alone, don't feel that they are in a different land, that they are part of Somerville,” she said. “We can be together in this room. We belong here. We can move forward together. That's my ultimate dream.”