A Festival of Art and Solidarity: A POC Showcase

How it came to be

For most of my life I could not bring myself to call myself an artist despite knowing that I was. All I did as a kid was draw, and it was obvious to me and everyone around me that this was something I was passionate about, but that wasn’t enough for my parents who urged me to get a “real job” and go to school. What they were trying to say with that statement is that they want me to be able to survive in this society and not have the same stress and worries as they’ve had growing up in poverty. I still internalized the shame surrounding art, and saw my art as something that was not valued.

In my 3rd year of studying Art at UCSC I still could not confidently call myself an artist despite having committed to the major. I realized that I was very uncomfortable in the Art department because of imposter syndrome due to the lack of representation amongst my peers, professors and content. I had also began to realize that I was never encouraged to pursue art because of socio-systemic beliefs around what people of color need to do. This in turn made me realize that I might not be the only artist of color feeling this way and set the stage for me to pursue creating a space dedicated to celebrating and uplifting artists of color.

The vision for this event was to bring together artists of color from across mediums, majors, and identities to celebrate each other's work. On the day of, it became so much more. We had a total of 30 artists displaying work, including myself ranging from video games, paintings, sculptures, prints, photography, key chain art, digital art, etc. I had two artists do live performances one creating a giant origami sculpture and the other artist made tortillas from a sculpted tortilla maker. I not only wanted to showcase artists of color but I also wanted to inspire other people to embrace their inner artist so I had live screen printing and a makers station. Sabrosura and Grupo Folklórico Los Mejicas, two dance communities on campus performed at the event in an effort to center this event around community art as well. I was able to have this event fully funded with the help of El Centro, The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the Student Union Assembly.