Digital Arts / Social Justice Exhibit
My project “Hispanic U.S.” was part of a small exhibit at the public space next to the Schmidt Gallery at FAU. Here’s the exhibit statement.
In 2015, digital media artist and scholar Sharon Daniel visited FAU and launched an interdisciplinary working group of faculty and students from the College of Arts and Letters interested in the intersection of digital art, scholarship and political activism. The group developed research and creative projects responding to arguments and methods present in Daniel’s work. Daniel’s innovative engagement with social issues through new media platforms and user-generated content inspired the group members to incorporate digital tools to address social justice, politics, memory and identity, among other subjects.
Departing from diverse research backgrounds, Digital Arts / Social Justice brings together digital poetry, video, data visualization, audio essays, and interactive narratives. As every discipline confronts the transformations brought by the digital age, this exhibition embodies the expansion of traditional forms of scholarship to visual and interactive approaches. At the same time, it opens a space for critical dialogue on interdisciplinary collaboration.
Here’s my project statement:
Based on the idea that a Hispanic identity has been part of the United States since long before the massive immigration of the last decades, this database compiles cities and towns that were once part of the Spanish monarchy or the Mexican republic, or that were named after a city, a person, or a word of Hispanic origin. In this growing database I collect stories behind names in an urgency to reveal, understand and celebrate the diverse and multicultural history of the U.S.