introduction

Harkening back to what was introduced in lavanda // lavender, this chapter brings art as theory, art as analysis, and unconventional ways of putting them together into focus to discuss the creation and impact of visual testimonios as archival praxis. Concurrently recognizing the intentionality and power of this methodological approach as a pedagogical praxis in an Ethnic Studies (or any) classroom, I foreground here the twofold importance of the way the work was done – namely, creatively and in layers.

In the second half of this chapter, I move this focus only slightly to discuss the outcomes of utilizing these visual testimonios and attempting to have them be alive in our communities – now and in the future. With this, I expand upon how visual testimonios as archival praxis has opened up opportunities for intergenerational and participatory engagement for those who are subjects of history, those who are emergent historians and archivists, and everyone who is in community together.

part I: art analysis through visual testimonio

collaborative seeing as analyses

Strongly in this chapter is the braid of conventional Ethnic Studies classrooms and creativity as important for knowing and understanding, and not just confined to “art.” What I’m doing is intentionally using and expanding upon creative methods to showcase and center pedagogical products that are public and long standing. I also used art-based methods and knowledges that are particular to the classrooms and projects that I’m in, that are living and changing in public, and that prioritize students (now young women and non-binary folks) as co-presenters. Drawing from things learned via the Collaborative Seeing Studio (see website), every aspect of this project incorporated creating and valuing knowledges in non-conventional (though valued in BIPOC communities for many years already) ways.

One way that this is connected is in the commitments of collaborative seeing: 1) iterative and collaborative meaning-making with researcher(s) and participant(s) or adult(s) and youth; 2) a structured, sequenced immersion in the visual and multimodal data intended to catalyze researcher reflexivity; 3) and an approach to looking with and listening to research participants, especially children, that makes space for their multiple narratives, identities, and the ways they want to be seen (Luttrell, 2018) Similarly, my students used visual testimonios as research analysis and product - students analyzed the oral history to decide what to include and how to represent themes; also a feminist representation of themes in centering what was most salient and important in the relationality between researcher/subject (in the oral history interview) and created something all can view. There was an understanding of how themes emerged out of the interview without exploiting the trust or vulnerability of sharing the full detailed story. Collaborative seeing was at the core of this analysis through our shared meaning making as both teacher, student, and elder.

artist inspirations

There are many artists that helped me to conceptualize and explain my theoretical approach – only a few of which can feasibly make it into this section^[1]. Although I was introduced to some of them after leaving the classroom, the way their art, messages, and narratives are interwoven in their works is directly connected to the praxis of visual testimonio. I name them here to show how the aesthetics of their work, the affect I feel while viewing and interacting with their work, and their themes have shaped my ideas on knowledge production through visual art.

Brother, Uncle, Father, Son, Friend, Elise R. Peterson, 2018

elise r. peterson

The art of Elise R. Peterson (along with Solange Knowles^[2]) is one of the most significant aesthetic influences throughout this digital dissertation and the WOCArchive. Peterson, a multi-modal artist, lived and worked near the school where the first iteration of this project started, and her work with collage and oral histories inspired the creation of the visual testimonio. Peterson’s piece, Brother, Uncle, Father, Son, Friend, (2018) pairs family audio from her biological father’s funeral with collaged photographs. After watching this piece in our Ethnic Studies classroom, we asked the artist to be part of our classroom space to talk through her practice, process, and inspiration. The images do not explicitly illustrate what is being said and are intentional art choices. Several of the art pieces throughout this dissertation follow an abstract aesthetic like that of Peterson --- that collage, that combine audio and visual in creative ways, and more.

The Thunder Up Above, Wendy Red Star, 2011

wendy red star

The work of Wendy Red Star was featured in our classroom for both aesthetic inspiration and to intentionally contextualize Indigenous women in our current context. Knowledge of Indigenous people is often viewed through a passive historical lens. Experiencing the work of Wendy Red Star, we learned a perspective of present-day Indigenous experiences through art. Her use of traditional Indigenous artifacts juxtaposed with futuristic landscapes speaks back to traditional hegemonic understandings of Indigenous peoples. I will explain the use of juxtaposing through art-based methodologies below in the examples of primer país and mi madrina.

Arbol de la Vida, Ana Mendieta,1976

ana mendieta

Ana Mendieta’s use of the body makes the audience feel almost uncomfortable. Many of her pieces make the viewer want to look away and cause a visceral reaction – perhaps, intentionally so. It is this deep emotion that is connected to affect and feeling- one that is also a rupture/shift from what is typically seen as feminized - that I seek to convey in this dissertation and in my visual art pieces. Mendieta’s work also encourages the audience to center the embodied experience. I encourage my audience to also describe and document when interacting with my work, and this was a collective practice when sharing the WOCarchive through the events detailed below.

expanding the archive through visual testimonios

Archives have a violent, troubled, and complicated past (for a brief introduction to this, see Hartman, 2018; Fuentes, 2016 for a few examples). Because of this, we must move delicately, intentionally, and deliberately in how we make sense of our past through archives. Saidiya Hartman’s^[3] work on critical fabulations combines historical and archival research with critical theory and fictional narrative to fill in the blanks left in the historical record (p.8). My attempt in this work is to actively create our own archives and give members of our community their flowers now, while they are still with us, so that we may avoid the necessities of critical fabulations in the future.

Coupled with a radical re-storying of the past, for example Hartman’s critical fabulations, and an intentional disruption of historical omissions of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) communities by BIPOC communities, WOCArchive attempted to embrace a subversive form of archiving. As detailed by Christen and Anderson (2019), conventional archival practices often “emphasize an end product over the process and knowledge embedded in the materials themselves" (p.110) Thus, this dissertation/project is inspired by indigenous practices, that emphasize relationality and process, where we move intentionally through “slow archiving” (Christen & Anderson, 2019). Through a shift to an emphasis on how we create and preserve, the process is both powerful in how we arrive to the product, while also shifting the hierarchies of power and structure.

These are some practical steps that ask us to imagine a future of slow archives that begin with an emphasis on archival justice built from engagements and sustained through relationships of mutuality. These are acts of unraveling old systems and building new ones. Slow archives demand movement out of standard archival spaces and frameworks and into, toward, and alongside networks of kinship that invite relationality and obligations. (p. 113, emphasis added)

woc feminisms in nuancing and expanding an archive

Visual testimonios illustrate how stories are more than words, and archives are more than texts and “artifacts.” Rather, the lease, the visual testimonios, and this dissertation are part of the archive. What we archive, and how we do it, becomes what is meaningful and valued across generations. It becomes historical narrative. In the queer archive, stor(y)ing mi desmadre (Islandia, 2020), Islandia describes how she has attempted to archive feminized queer nightlife that she helped organize in the early 2000s when things were not as well documented online. She is trying to archive an experience that is hard to replicate, and because of this, part of the archiving process is in thinking creatively about preserving “contracts, scripts, receipts, photos, videos, ruined stockings, playlists, empty cartons/bottles of beer, chipped press-on nails, gunky eyelashes, gluey facial hair, love letters, hate email, press coverage and all things related to promotion including flyers, stickers, posters, interviews, t-shirts, blogs, calendars, among many others” (Islandia, 2020). Through this recollection, she shows us how we give meaning to what we intentionally decide to preserve and archive - the same way I gave meaning to the lease referenced in the opening of this chapter - as a yearning for proof of my existence. Conventional (textual) archives are not the only legible archives, and archives like stor(y)ing mi desmadre and the youth preserving the stories of their matriarchs in the WOCarchive show us a few other options. In the WOCarchive, the use of visual testimonio through collage and intentionality, and an emphasis of process in what we preserve, is connected to Lorde’s vision of intersectionality as nuancing of our experiences as WOC. We also push the archives to center the margins – in a way that moves us (WOC) from the margins to the center (hooks, 1984) - by reclaiming, re-historicizing, and disrupting the archive as a space that centers WOC and redefines what is being preserved.

And it is because of this longing for my roots and preservation, that the WOCArchive and the pedagogy employed in our Ethnic Studies class approached archiving as a verb. Yes, it’s a noun, and yes, I’d like to keep all my parents' documents, literally, their papeles (like the lease), safe. But more importantly about the action, the praxis - That by preserving that lease, I’m resisting my erasure; my students creating visual testimonios with matriarchs in their lives resists erasure and encourages connection. Layered on this particularly for youth, is the notion that we as educators value familial and community knowledge as worthy of knowing – as important as algebra or chemistry. I encourage us, historically marginalized communities, to take on archive as a verb more often. Not just for posterity, but as a political act to ensure our knowledge, our experiences, are available to seven generations and beyond. Part of an Ethnic Studies curriculum, and one that incorporates creativity and personal investment, is a refusal to be erased. Ethnic Studies is about existence, but also importantly—beyond non erasure—it is about honoring this knowledge (from lived experience) and making it pedagogy so that we can collectively learn from these experiences and so that the pedagogy becomes part of self-preservation.

1. List of other poets, artists, lyricists who influenced this work. ↑

2. Elise R. Peterson was on the founding team of Saint Heron, Solange Knowles’ record label that produced music, art pieces, and exhibition experiences. ↑

3. Venus in Two Acts and the importance of What Hartman seems to suggest here is the potential for a type of historical speculation or “critical fabulation” as she calls it — the assertion that in speculating about the inaccessible, silenced voices of the past, one might be able to “tell an impossible story” while simultaneously amplifying the “impossibility of its telling” (11). The implications of this act are not merely confined to “counter-histories” but also a “history of the present… the incomplete project of freedom… [which is] a condition defined by the vulnerability to premature death and to gratuitous acts of violence” (4). ↑