Unity Undivided: A Surreal Reimagining of Pan-American Harmony

This reinterpretation of Diego Rivera’s Pan American Unity breathes a new, dreamlike life into his monumental vision of hemispheric solidarity. Titled Unity Undivided, this work seeks not to fragment Rivera’s message, but to reassemble it through the prism of symbolism, surrealism, and modern aesthetic layering. The composition blends Rivera’s detailed fresco panels into a multi-dimensional canvas of light, gesture, and metaphor, asking not what binds the Americas in geography alone—but in purpose, struggle, and shared memory.
Rivera’s original mural is a vast celebration of technology, labor, art, and heritage—rendered in his signature figurative realism. In this reimagining, I’ve drawn his human scenes like memory—pressing them toward the bottom third of the composition, anchoring the visual narrative. Workers, inventors, and revolutionaries—Rivera’s icons of human effort—remain in their full, vibrant color, but fade slightly as they rise, making space for more symbolic overlays above. This was a deliberate choice. Their placement grounds the piece in a common history—our shared inheritance of industry, resistance, and creative power.
Above them, a mountain range—painted in unnatural hues of lavender, sienna, and flame-orange—acts as both natural and metaphorical divide. These mountains, glowing with a warm, almost cosmic gradient, reflect the idea that continental geography holds both division and unity. They are jagged, luminous, otherworldly—a reminder that the landscapes we claim are larger and older than our politics. Sprouting from these ridges is a stark black tree, branching upward toward the sky—a symbol of ancestral connection, but also fragile continuity. It is rooted in history, yet reaches toward modernity with tension.
Over the tree and mountainscape, a giant pair of clasped hands hovers. They are layered in semi-transparent golden tones, nearly glowing against the dusk sky behind them. These hands—somewhat ethereal, human yet divine—suggest the labor of agreement. They echo treaties, handshakes, protest solidarity, and spiritual joining. Their positioning atop the compass motif is intentional. The compass, large and silver, subtly emerges from the cloud, suspended like a technological sun. It serves as the mural’s central metaphor: a navigation tool not only for land, but for justice, direction, and purpose.
Adjacent to the hands, a surreal troupe of dancers arcs through the air in a circle, colored in shades of amethyst, coral, and rose. Their flight defies gravity, suggesting an almost mythic celebration of unity, rhythm, and joy. These bodies are not just dancers; they are continents, cultures, and histories locked in motion. Their spiraled shape mimics planetary rotation—a celestial choreography across time zones and belief systems. Their inclusion speaks to Rivera’s own celebration of cultural synthesis, though here it is abstracted through movement and color rather than the linear narrative.
Color in this piece acts as its emotional script. The bottom section—the Rivera fresco—retains its original rich palette: terracotta skins, cobalt machines, viridian backgrounds. These tones are earthy and immediate, conveying the tactile world of labor and invention. But as the piece rises, the color shifts: smoky apricots, pale violets, electric indigos. These tones suggest something less tangible—beliefs, ambitions, the emotional weight of unity rather than its physical structures. At the very top, the color becomes soft and sun-washed: luminous whites, pale ambers, and hints of blush, evoking spiritual presence and possibility.
In composing this reinterpretation, my emotional compass was the concept of fragility within unity. Rivera painted his mural at a time of crisis and hope—World War II looming, nationalism rising, and the dream of hemispheric solidarity being actively tested. I wanted to mirror that complexity, placing the literal beneath the abstract, the material beneath the visionary. Unity, in this image, is not something given—it is climbed toward, danced for, agreed upon, and carefully held like a sapling against the wind.
The compass and the tree are recurring motifs I chose deliberately. The compass, cool and mechanical, speaks to direction and orientation—an instrument of exploration. But it is not the only guide. The black tree—organic, vulnerable—grows alongside it, reminding us that direction without roots leads only to drift. Together, they suggest a duality: one of science and soul, steel and sap, invention and memory. Rivera’s belief in progress was never at the expense of cultural depth. This reinterpretation honors that balance by embedding both elements into the spine of the visual arc.
When I created Unity Undivided, I didn’t want to echo Rivera’s mural so much as breathe into it. His vision—grand, grounded, and deeply human—needed to touch the surreal to become timeless. By layering symbols of modernity, movement, and mythology over his foundation, this piece becomes a conversation across generations of artists, workers, and visionaries. It is both a continuation and a departure: a mural for those navigating both past and future.