Storytelling Con Cariño: The Ethics of Creating an Art-Based Archive With Mami and Abuelita

• In Event: Between the How and the What: Negotiating the Messy Middle of Arts-Based Methodologies for Social Justice

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation focuses on the ethical dilemmas in the creation and impact of visual testimonios as archival praxis within intergenerational learning spaces. Through visual testimonios, stop motion collages paired with audio from oral histories created by women of color (WOC), the author illustrates the dilemmas in creating an intergenerational archive within an Ethnic Studies high school classroom, where intimate stories, images, and art are documented, preserved, and amplified.

Visual testimonio creation entails analysis and a careful curation of historical narrative (author 2023). The author nuances and expands the archive, attempting to answer the call from WOC feminists to include ourselves, our families, and our communities in research, and to move beyond a positivist chronology (Bernal 1998). The author expands upon how visual testimonios as archival praxis opens up opportunities for intergenerational and participatory engagement for those who are subjects of history, emergent historians and archivists, and everyone who is in community together. Recognizing the intentionality and power of this methodological approach as a pedagogical praxis in an Ethnic Studies (or any) classroom, the author foregrounds the importance of the way the work was done – namely, creatively and in layers.

Methods & Framework
To implement a feminist and art-based praxis centered in liberation, the methodology and theoretical framework of this research are intertwined and cannot be separated. Rooted in both Black & Chicana feminisms (hooks 1994; Anzaldúa & Moraga 1981), the author uses a methodology that focuses on process over product and centers how something comes to be instead of simply describing what it is. Lived experience is also a tenet within this praxis and within the tenets of youth participatory action research (yPAR), where people are presumed already to be experts of their lived experience, and that that expertise is valued in the research (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Mayorga, 2014). Thus, having youth participate in the research means they are already contributing through their expertise of lived experience. Drawing from Black feminist theorists mentioned above, and recentering here - lived experience as legitimate means of knowledge productions are rooted in a feminist tradition, such as The Combahee River (1977) who states that the personal is political.

Data
Data includes visual testimonios from the publicly accessible digital archive, autoethnographic reflections from the author on various milestones of the archive: inaugural archive launch, youth and author co-curated exhibition at an art festival, and public responses/reactions to the archive through digital participatory tools.

Results
The results of this study emphasize the importance of girls of color’s participation in research as knowledgeable experts and the importance of arts-based methods as tenets of feminist praxises that center ethics and care.

Significance
The significance of this project is manifold: The importance of an archival and arts-based feminist praxis where there are several iterations of this archive based on specific themes, historical events, and/or neighborhoods; The importance of learning experiences that include spaces with our elders as attendees and featured speakers; and, the importance of art-based methods centered on liberation across K-12 classrooms regardless of the subject.

Author

• Wendy Barrales, New York University