Though immigration is already a hot topic, this semester Downtown students will be exposed to new perspectives on the subject through art.
The exhibit “Migration: Immigration, Giving Honor to Cultures and Communities,” which opened Jan. 16, is displayed throughout the University Center’s second floor.
The exhibit currently features more than 60 pieces by about 15 artists from around the Valley and runs through May 16. The exhibit is meant to inspire conversations about immigration, ASU community-engagement liaison Malissa Geer said.
“The exhibit really is just a way to help all of our students, staff and guests to talk about an issue that is a hard one to talk about and that people feel differently about,” Geer said. “The arts are a way to at least stop for a minute and think about that piece and think if it’s telling you or challenging you to think differently.”
The exhibit will expand to around 200 pieces, brought in from West campus and South Mountain Community College, and leads up to an artists’ reception April 3 to coincide with that month’s First Friday. Artists who contributed to the gallery will be at the reception along with live entertainment.
Public policy graduate student Ian Danley contributed to the exhibit with a piece he and 30 high-school students put together. The piece, called “The Media Project,” is a selection of highlights of more than 300 photos and 30 interviews of members of their downtown Phoenix community.
“It was an attempt to hear and learn about our community by going out into their own neighborhood to look for different voices, different perspectives and different ways of hearing and seeing their neighborhood,” Danley said.
Danley volunteers with Neighborhood Ministries, a downtown Phoenix Christian outreach for low-
income families and at-risk youth. He and the organization believe the youth are not part of the problem, but can be part of the solution, Danley said.
“We believe that these students aren’t young people to be afraid of, but instead they can be powerful agents of change in their own community,” Danley said.
Artist Luis Gutierrez of downtown Phoenix contributed about 10 pieces to the gallery.
Gutierrez said artists puts things from their own lives into their work, and for him that was his Hispanic ethnicity, his spirituality and his multiple-sclerosis disability. Luis said he wants the Downtown students to hear the voice of artists on the topic of immigration.
“Rather than picking information from more teachers or from the news, it’s the perspective of the artists,” Gutierrez said. “It’s what’s on our minds because artists and scientists have always been pretty close in figuring things out together.”
Another purpose of the exhibit was to embed the University with the community, Geer said. A great way to accomplish that was by asking the community what they wanted the topic of the gallery to be, Geer said. Volunteers from the community helped install the exhibit.
“The day the installation went in was amazing because there were probably about 30 different community artists who were inside our building, so they as community persons are bringing their own artwork, their own point of view and they are really gifting that to us,” Geer said.
The exhibit spurs conversation on the controversial topic of immigration but in a peaceful manner, Geer said.
“Art is just interesting because it is in your face, but it’s not confrontational,” Geer said. “It kind of warms you up to a conversation because you have to look at a piece of art and kind of take it in. You have an emotional response if you take the time and then if someone happens to be standing next to you it sparks a conversation.”
Reach the reporter at snrodri2@asu.edu.
