SFAI140 Chronicles

“We are social beings and therefore our biggest resource is each other.” These foundational words from Paola López Ramírez (Equal Justice 2017/18) reflect how our alumni cultivate creative ways to be in community. Their stories offer approaches of social engagement to hold space for one another, support one another, have generative exchanges about our challenges, our differences, our affinities, and what we want to do next for our future.

Edible Hut: Mira Burack

“Commitment to a love ethic transforms our lives by offering us a different set of values to live by. In large and small ways, we make choices based on a belief that honesty, openness, and personal integrity need to be expressed in public and private decisions.”
– bell hooks, all about love NEW VISIONS

During this time, I am learning to listen through my pores. I hope my movements in the world, in art and life, can be deliberate, empathetic, heart-filled, embodied, and fearless. When I don’t know what to do, I lie down – each part of my body is on equal ground, there is no hierarchy, everything is horizontal, and I feel held by the earth.

Edible Hut: Kate Daughdrill

During these challenging times, we are being given an opportunity to go within in order to transform without. We are being given the time and the necessity to uproot what is unconscious in us—to look squarely at the pain and harm caused by our unconscious patterns (mental, emotional, structural).

As I bring awareness and loving presence to these parts of myself (through meditation, learning from others, writing, praying), they begin to naturally realign with more life-giving, mutually free, peaceful ways of being.

Something bigger is at work in these times—in both the dark and light. It’s our job to sit and feel…as love sculpts us into a more conscious version of ourselves. From that place, we naturally take skillful, convicted, loving action.

We are changing. The world is changing.

Megan Heeres

I am grateful to live in Detroit – during this current moment. A place and a people that has endured so much already, but also a place that persists despite it all. I am humbled by the strength, generosity, rage, creativity, patience, love, and pride that I witness here on a daily basis.

Ann Lewis

This is the time that America makes a choice. 2020 is the year we decide who we want to be. We are in a metamorphosis, but what are we transforming into? From turmoil, grief, death, despair, isolation we can choose joy, community, life, kindness, justice or we can choose inaction. Inaction will continue to drive us on the path set for this nation hundreds of years ago- but as people continue to rise up in community, to dream of new worlds that nurture all of us we have a glimpse of a future foundation built on justice, joy, and equity. That is the horizon I stare down everyday- knowing that if I take my eyes off of it for one moment- it may slip from view.

Shaun Leonardo 

White art institutions will never truly commit to the work, the necessary dialogue, if the individuals that make up these institutions and systems are not assessing and grappling with their own white identity. That is what is missing. Until white individuals move beyond addressing the murder of George Floyd and instead move to identify officer Derek Chauvin within themselves, their work will not bend toward anti-racism.

S. Paola López Ramírez

I wonder about celebrating life within this madness. Creating safe spaces for joy and healing for Black bodies, for Brown bodies, for Trans bodies, for Indigenous bodies, for poor bodies, for immigrant bodies, for social leaders, for the memory of our ancestors and for our non-human kin.

I wonder about our capacity to recognize Earth’s gifts and ki* teachings. Our Mother is suffering and dying, yet ki continues to give willingly, unabatedly, and without a concern for worthiness. Ki feeds us all, gives us all clean air to breathe and water to drink. Could we (the colonizer and colonized) become better listeners? Could we learn to observe deeply? Could we learn from plants, animals, mountains and water? Could we begin to re-member? Could we relearn to see ourselves in our Mother’s reflection? Could we begin to unmask the illusion of separation

*Robin Wall Kimmerer offers ki/kin as pronouns to address the natural world as a subject (rather than an object). I accept her offer and use them as a way to recognize the beingness in all living things.

Sarah Shotland

This summer, prison abolition suddenly became a household phrase, and consequently became politicized in ways that intentionally and unintentionally misrepresented its meaning. As I explained in my SFAI140 talk, we can only achieve abolition through abundance; we can only dismantle through investment, we can only defund police if we refund our communities. Despite that misunderstanding, our current moment brings me such hope. More people than ever are engaged in reimagining a world where all of us are safe and free, where there is possibility rather than prison.

Dara Silverman

There are fragments of feelings still in half thought: A falling down, a breaking, a reckoning, a mourning. The oozing head of the pimple of colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and the dominating and extractive relationship to the land, creatures and ourselves suddenly bursting violently to the surface. Now that it’s here, it’s impossible to imagine it not coming. But is this the moment? Or just the moment that ushers in the moments yet unimaginable?

Jess Zimbabwe

The present pandemic and its concomitant recession have laid bare the inequalities and structural racism that have long shaped our communities. Our nation’s history has been intricately linked with white supremacy from its inception The current moment is raw and can be painful, but sitting with that pain also gives us time to examine the ways that we have benefited from, given sustenance to, and papered over the problems of systems that perpetuated injustices. In the planning and design professions, I’ve been encouraging colleagues to examine that awareness and then to begin the work of undoing racism. We’re going to need everybody with their heads in the game, because when we emerge from this recession, neighborhoods across America will still be dramatically under-invested; BIPOC communities will still face a maddening paradox of both disinvestment and displacement pressure; and many of our cities will still be in the throes of an unprecedented and devastating housing affordability crisis. There’s no time to lose.

Dislocation, fragmentation, and mourning become the stark reality of a migrant’s journey upon arrival to a new place. Listen to our alumni share their intimate reflections about longing and belonging. Their voices call out to the wind, carrying words of love, loss, anger, and reconciliation.

hazel batrezchavez

In November 2019, I wrote this poem At The Crossing for SFAI140.
I’ve been invited here to reflect on it now:
Under These Unprecedented Times
When my relatives are still incarcerated in prisons, jails and detention
centers- with little to no PPE
Under These Unprecedented Times
When my relatives are still being disappeared and silenced
Under These Unprecedented Times
When my relatives are still thirsty for running water
Under These Unprecedented Times
When my relatives still tell us not to run or else we might be mistaken and shot
There isn’t much to reflect on because not much has changed
It’s Still and always will be By Any Means Necessary

Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo

Not too long ago “shithole countries” was a ubiquitous soundbite in American news media. In an age of racist and xenophobic political rhetoric this one proved to be a real heartbreaker for me, because I happen to come from one of those countries. And while knowing the message was not true, it lingered in me and as I reflected on it I realized it had actually wounded me. More insidiously was how my inner child felt, as he was told to “go back home”, which is more or less what every immigrant person of colour has been told in some shape or form in their lives.

Black Lives matter movement in Canada has laid bare for everyone to see the open wounds of racism, bigotry, and xenophobia as a societal structure for oppression. As a working artist I also recognize that institutions in the Canadian Art scene have been upholders of this oppressive system that has largely benefited white artists for decades.

I choose my artistic voice, in order to create a better sense of belonging in myself. As a Salvadoran living in Canada my practice attempts to reconcile the historical trauma of our civil war, to heal the memory of violence, to reclaim my own story through working ideas of re-growth and re-generation through personal myth and indigenous cosmology.

Varuni Kanagasundaram

Current times have revealed inequities in our society and fractures in structures built on the legacy of colonisation and capitalism. Times of relative normality often mask or dismiss deep concerns for the diverse community that make up our society at the level of humanity. There is much learning to be gained from experiences of first nations people, the original custodians of the land; people of all races including migrants of colour who have come to form the fabric of our society. They bring a way of relating to the world and make meaning through their experiences and cultural practices. These can inform and open a different way of connecting through a universality of language that embraces what is fundamental to humanity.

Eva Rocha

Racial related trauma is constant, visible, or invisible. Throughout 2020, we are experiencing it in a magnified way. The focus on the Black Lives Matter movement is as crucial and urgent, as ever. The struggles of different groups of color parallel to the main cause of Black Americans; and, at this moment, our understanding of many groups’ issues have broadened and increased our ability to comprehend an undenied struggle for identity-rights.

I wrote the poem in my SFAI 140 presentation while reflecting on the amazing impossibility of many groups ever being able to get together to speak for their causes, and how all causes are somehow tied to each other. I wrote it in 2016 while walking in the Women’s March in Washington, DC. While walking, I would see signs that said: “We are the People”, and I thought about that concept – “the people” – not just as it relates to here but how it relates to everywhere. I started the poem by saying, “In me all races co-habit.” I am a combination of races and of the specificity of their struggles in time. Nevertheless, the issues of race at this time and during this world pandemic, confront the deepest fundamentals of our survival beyond race, as species. We came to realize that our shared humanity is tied and perishable.

Gabriel Sosa

The fractures and failures of our legal system remain all too present since I recorded my SFAI140 clip, magnified by the pandemic and the protests for systemic change. In times like these of such unshakeable fear and uncertainty, where injustice is not just common but rampant, I am drawn to re-examine the role of the artist in our world. While art might not change political agendas or bring back those we have lost, I hope that it can at least offer a space for reflection, an opportunity for us to come just a little bit closer, and a determination to move forward.

“Miracles happen when fragments become whole.” These words from Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, a Cherokee-Lakota elder, fittingly weave the voices of our alumni into a tapestry of artistic process that speaks to the intergenerational trauma that’s deeply rooted in colonization and racism. Their stories demonstrate how art is a powerful way to connect and can offer glimpses of hope.

SARAH SAO MAI HABIB

“Trauma decontextualized in a person looks like personality. Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits. Trauma in a people looks like culture.” – Resmaa Menakem.

Our task is to remember the historic context & intergenerational patterns that have deeply embedded & normalized violence in every aspect of our lives. With truthful reckoning, there comes a serious responsibility for healing & reparations at multiple scales. This is the urgent liberation work that we must engage in interpersonally & globally. This is the work of remembering & recreating cultures which courageously affirm life, reciprocity, and honoring all our relations on earth. This is the work of remembering what it means to be human.

DARICE POLO

John Lewis’s statement, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” was exemplified by the image of his final journey over the Edmund Pettus bridge in a horse drawn caisson. Through his death his message is clear to us, be strong amid the use of excessive force against peaceful assembly. As I examine, in my work, the origins of colonialism while opposing its current manifestation, the confluence of past and present histories of enduring injustice emerge as its construct. We must collectively unearth our past to remove symbols of oppression, end systemic racism, restructure a democracy that serves and protects all its people, and push back against the global forces of neoliberalism. We have the power.

CELESTE DE LUNA

Sadly I am feeling unfazed over the current moment, and instead frustrated over America’s shocked reactions about police militarization extending to the interior of the United States. This has long been the status quo in my border community since 9/11. Border artists and communities have been sounding this alarm for almost 20 years. My struggle as a brown woman artist from the militarized border is having people interpret my story and artwork, through their own lens and for their own purposes. My hope is to have a voice that is acknowledged and respected and to be able to communicate in ways that are harmonious with traditional cultural life ways and distinctly not Anglo-American.

JEEYEUN LEE

It’s incredible to be alive right now. Everything is visible, everything is in flux. The crushing acceleration of oppression, as well as years of organizing and resistance, are showing themselves: the mechanisms of state sanctioned violence that enforce white supremacist capitalism. Extraction and genocide as instruments of ongoing colonization. The role of the military in defending owning class interests. The importance of symbols used to mark history. We are witnesses, we are agents. I aim for my art to help us see and help us feel, whether it comes as outrage or heartbreak.

YVETTE SERRANO

In this moment we are witnessing how white supremacy and capitalism continue to perpetuate violence, at times more visible than others. This violence has taken countless black lives, has left people on the Navajo Nation without water, and continues to keep children in cages. We are also witnessing a relationship between these crises and social change; A time to address these structural and racial inequities.

Na Omi Judy Shintani

People of color have been targets of hatred throughout American history and at other times we can be invisible, unseen. All people long for acceptance, inclusion, comfort, evolution. We all wish to embrace our culture, history, stories – to be human beings in our entirety. I create space for inquiry and connection.The shadow side of us exists, and fear makes us forget that we are all one. We must find ways to understand and connect to one another and art is a powerful way to do it.

This first collection echoes the uncompromising call for anti-racism efforts and the abolition of structural oppression, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Listen to what past residents have to say about the many forms of defiance and reclamation used to disrupt racial biases…how one visualizes the invisible, the inequalities, the liminal space between myth and truth… what the modern day slave system looks like…and how we transform the criminalization of public spaces into a generative place for people of color to be seen and heard on the streets.