SKY’S THE LIMIT
Artist’s mural outside Pullman cheerleading gym was inspired by the athletes who practice there
In a mural that artist Jasmina Amalya Cazacu painted in Pullman, a girl’s head isn’t just in the clouds — it is the clouds.
Cazacu, who goes by Diosa, brought one of her fantastical creatures to My Cheer Now, 12002 S. Doty Ave., with help from Pullman Arts.
The mural is titled “Among the Stars.” As with Diosa’s other pieces in Chicago, it blurs the line between fiction and reality.
“The core of my work is really about appreciating the magic beneath the mundane,” says Diosa, 29. “Just finding magic in everything around you. I think it’s always there, waiting patiently for us to discover it.”
Diosa photographed a friend, a South Sider with a background in cheerleading, as her inspiration for the girl in the mural. Then, she added the dream-like elements.
“I usually do a mashup of someone within my community who’s willing to pose for me and then things I find inspiring,” Diosa says.
The girl’s head blends with the clouds to create hair out of the natural elements, her eyebrows reflecting the fluffy white imagery. Her ears are reminiscent of a mythical elf or fairy, and her smile reflects the joy of the cheerleaders inside the gym’s walls.
“I wanted to paint her with an expression of hope and positivity and that energy,” the artist says. “When you think of cheer, it’s something so full of life and so expressive and full of hope. So I wanted to create something like that.”
Marquel Qaiyim, who owns the gym and coaches there, says the mural provided a “morale boost” to everyone at the 13-year-old gym.
“It gives you a sense of the high that you have when people think you can’t make it, but you still come out first place,” Qaiyim says.
The gym is home to the Chicago Storm All-Star team. Qaiyim says the mural went beyond capturing the team’s theme and colors, also getting at the spirit of the athletes he has coached.
“I look at that thing for five minutes every night after we close the gym,” Qaiyim says. “It looks like every little girl, every teenager and every young adult we’ve coached.
There’s a feature about that mural that reminds you of everybody you’ve worked with.”
In the background, the moon and stars light up the sky.
“I thought of a candy-colored sunset,” Diosa says. “That time when it’s really late and you can see the moon coming out, but the sky is still colorful.”
Diosa was born in Romania, grew up in Chicago and now lives in Mexico City. Growing up in Little Village, she remembers being inspired by the public art in her neighborhood.
She started her art career as a teenager in Chicago doing graffiti — a scene that’s male-dominated.
“Especially as a young woman, I was very aware of it, and I had to learn to navigate that space and earn my respect,” Diosa says. “I feel like women have to work a lot harder to earn respect in that type of scene.”
Among her other works in Chicago, she collaborated with other artists in 2020 to create a massive mural in South Chicago.
In 2022, a sprawling piece on the side of a Pilsen bookstore became her passion project. She filled the nonprofit Open Books Pilsen with imagery that looks like it could have been ripped out of the pages of a fairy tale.
Her largest mural is in the Loop at 33 E. Ida B. Wells Drive, titled “On the Wings of Change” in honor of the women’s suffrage movement.