Overview
UndocuNation: Pro-Migrant Agenda-Building with Artist-Activist Favianna Rodriguez
Thu, May 3 • 6 pm
YBCA Forum
FREE
2011 was a devastating year for immigrants. Congress failed to administer relief to the estimated 12 million undocumented women, men, youth and children living in this country and deported over 1,000,000 migrants. Various anti-migrant laws were enacted in states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Utah and Alabama.
Artists from different racial backgrounds, immigration history and documentation statuses will be sharing art works, and cultural interventions about the current immigration crisis. Oakland-based artist Favianna Rodriguez will host an evening addressing the untenable consequences of our country's broken immigration system, through performances, film excerpts, art installations, music and readings. Arts and cultural professionals will also speak about their art work to shift the national dialogue around immigration, rooted in the conviction that images and stories can transform the debate.
Art, Performances & Readings by:
• Hosted by Favianna Rodriguez and Jeff Chang
• Janine Brito & Nato Green, comedians from Laughter Against the Machine
• Yosimar Reyes, two-spirit poet &activist
• DJ Sloe Poke
• Dignidad Rebelde, Melanie Cervantes & Jesus Barraza, artists
• Daniel Alarcon, award-winning writer
• Julio Salgado, artivist & co-founder of DreamersAdrift.com
• Jesus Iniguez, spoken word artists & co-founder of DreamersAdrift.com
• Oriana Bolden, filmmamer
• Cloee Cooper, organizer with the Center for New Community
• Walidah Imarisha, writer & performer
• Sean San Jose, playwright
• Imin Yeh, visual artist
Artist Bio
Favianna Rodriguez
Favianna Rodriguez co-founded Tumi's Design, Oakland's only bilingual design studio dedicated to human rights projects, the Eastside Arts Alliance and a political screen-printing collective called Taller Tupac Amaru. She weaves the world's grassroots struggles together using a color palette you want to wear; her portfolio reading like a pictorial history book on social justice.
Raised by strict parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Lima, Peru, Favianna, 33, graduated from high school with honors and went on to UC Berkeley to pursue a career in medicine, engineering or architecture. Inspired by a mentor who believes we're all lifelong students with the ability to learn even outside of the classroom, she dropped out of college at 20 to dedicate her life to art. In essence, the decision educated us all.
Favianna's latest feat is helping organize CultureStrike, the first coalition of artists, writers, and filmmakers working to expose the negative effects of SB 1070. She spent four days in Arizona with CultureStrike seeing, firsthand, the impact of a failed immigration policy.
YBCA’s programs are made possible in part by:
Abundance Foundation
Adobe
Koret Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
Novellus Systems
Community Engagement and Youth Education Programs are made possible in part by:
The Bernard Osher Foundation, The Sato Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Panta Rhea Foundation, The Kimball Foundation, U.S. Bank and Members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Innovation, Community Engagement and Audience Development programs supported, in part, by generous grants from:
The James Irvine Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Dance/USA, Creative Capacity Fund's NextGen Innovation Grant Program, The Wallace Foundation and Adobe Foundation
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