Izzy Paez and El Sol

By André Escobar-Linares

I met Izzy Paez at noon in Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto. She was selling her paintings at a visual arts festival. From a distance, I saw one of her paintings that read, “Hay alebrijes en Izalco,” and as a Salvadoran migrant myself, I got excited. I approached her booth, spoke with her briefly, exchanged Instagrams with her, and then we lost touch until, a year later, I learned that she and El Sol had a close connection.

One night, while scrolling, I came across a fleeting video Izzy had posted on her social media. She was inviting people to El Sol, where she would be painting live with electronic music playing in the background—a multidisciplinary artistic expression I had never witnessed before. On top of that, the idea of visiting El Sol immediately caught my attention. So I searched for Izzy’s Instagram profile, which, in my opinion, is filled with dreamlike paintings that resemble the childish dreams of a dying woman unconsciously searching through her memories and fantasies for a sense of home and peace so she can die smiling—something macabre and tender. I found her profile and contacted her to arrange a conversation about the relationship between her and El Sol. We made plans.

I arrived half an hour late, with a dead phone, without my wallet, hungover, and carrying two cameras. I apologized for being late, but El Sol would not open for another two hours, so there was still time to talk and shoot a few videos and photographs. It was then that she told me the story of El Sol.

Five siblings emigrated from Mexico to Canada in December 1989 with a single objective: to bring together pre-Hispanic cuisine and Mexican folk art and make them coexist under one roof. They founded the restaurant and art gallery El Sol in East Toronto. Izzy is Yolanda’s niece, the founder of the restaurant, where she developed her artistic expression from childhood. In a way, Izzy is a daughter of El Sol.

The restaurant recently closed, on August 16, 2026. However, when a place possesses such intense energy that it directly influences the creative development of an artist, when a place takes on multiple roles—home, gallery, restaurant, an anachronistic fortress—it takes more than a written piece, more than a video, to make it endure in the collective memory of a place as restless, turbulent, and sometimes forgetful as Toronto. It requires a magical cry, something that can serve as a mental tattoo, so that Toronto and other cities may remember and reckon with the significance of having had El Sol among their streets.

But my resources are limited, and all I can offer is an honest call: in the form of a written piece, in the form of a reel, with the hope that it might become an echo of the light that once emanated from El Sol when it inhabited the streets of Toronto.