By Sally Shapiro
Resilience. Hope. Transformation.
These are the pillars that guided a student-run art exhibit that ran this fall in UC Santa Barbara’s MultiCultural Center (MCC), called “Echoes of Empowerment,” meant to foster community healing through the power of art.
The MultiCultural Center’s student-run art exhibit, “Echoes of Empowerment” showcased art that addresses white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy and creating community.
The MCC has long been a place on campus for students of color to seek solace and belonging. Its lounge was decorated with poems, collages and paintings dealing with themes of white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy and community.
Fourth-year English student Den Earl Dulos, the MCC program assistant, opened the show by explaining why the work of the MCC is so important. “Most of all we want to inspire BIPOC students and artists with this space. Hundreds of people enter and exit this room and we want the art that surrounds them to be inspiring,” Dulos said at the opening reception.
He called up each artist to stand by their work and say a few words about what it means to them. Stories of pain and hope filled the room as each student spoke to the audience.
Jhedi, a fourth-year History of Art and Architecture student, explained why he is drawn to the medium of collage. “You can imagine things that are unimaginable and go outside the bounds of what art can be.” he said. “It’s like music. You have beats, pitch and tone and they come together to make a symphony.”
He also had a poem on display entitled “My Roots,” which explores the trauma of colonialism and feeling disconnected from one’s ancestral homeland and culture due to the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Jhedi’s poems, “My Roots” and “The Wind That Speaks to me,” written about his Black identity and the theft of culture that occured through colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.
“Being Black in America, people always ask ‘Where are you from, originally?’” he explained. His poem answers back, “To be black in America/Is to tend to the roots that were pulled/While growing in a concreted land.”
Art by Louis Antonio Ledezma Martinez entitled “Please Don’t Forget Me.” In the description accompanying the piece, Martinez included a letter he wrote to his family, motivated by the possibility that he might die from gun violence.
Another student artist, Louis Antonio Ledezma Martinez, showed work that depicted a machine gun and bullet holes surrounded by delicately-placed blue flowers known as “forget-me-nots.”
Listening to his little brother’s fears of school-shootings made Martinez realize how real the threat of gun violence is for kids. He explained that as a first-generation college student at UCSB, his art is reckoning with the idea that he carries the dreams of his family.
“If I die, the hope of my family does too,” he said.
Another student artist, Citlali Ibarra, was inspired by a dream and painted herself on an operating table with her insides cut open. Ibarra said she never wanted children until she dreamt that a group of boys tied her down and forcefully tied her tubes. When she awoke, the lingering pain of thinking she wasn’t going to be able to have kids made her realize she does.
The art exhibit offered a way to show her work to the student-body. “The idea that someone who I may know, or not, will see my name next to my work makes me so proud,” Ibarra said.
Sally Shapiro is a third-year film and media studies major andwriter for The Daily Nexus. She wrote this article for her Digital Journalism course.