Giving WOC Their Flowers Through Collage: Archiving the Embodied and Ephemeral Through Arts-based Methods

• In Event: Politics and Possibilities of Collage as Archive: Centering Anticolonial Methods

Abstract

This research situates archive as a verb through an art-based archiving process that documents a praxis and 1.) expands understandings of what we define as legitimate and valued knowledge worth preserving; and 2.) elucidates what we learn from the visual representations of their analysis, of their process. Through youth created art pieces in the FlowersArchive and documenting the process of creating a participatory archive, I explore what it means to incorporate archival artifacts that highlight how meaning making and archives do not need to be centered on written word or exclusively exist in higher education and cultural institutions, but rather the community can be active archivists in their own right through an art-based praxis.

In the queer archive, stor(y)ing mi desmadre, Islandia (2020) describes her archival process preserving feminized queer nightlife in Mexico City that she helped organize in the 2000s. Although not well documented online, Islandia thinks creatively about the archiving process by considering how to account for the ephemeral: “scripts, receipts... ruined stockings, playlists, empty cartons/bottles of beer, chipped press-on nails, gunky eyelashes, gluey facial hair... and all things related to promotion including flyers, stickers, posters...among many others” (Islandia, 2020). This recollection shows how archivists give meaning to what we intentionally decide to preserve and how archive can be a yearning for proof of existence. Her praxis refuses conventional (textual) archives as the only legible archives, and archives like stor(y)ing mi desmadre and my research, youth preserving stories of their matriarchs in the FlowersArchive, show us other options.

Data for this research was gathered in my classroom where multimodal storytelling, with many textures and senses triggered through short movement, sound, and visuals, was encouraged. Through this process digital collage art pieces, visual testimonios, were created as culminating Ethnic Studies projects in a girls and gender expansive high school where students conducted a series of interviews with a notable matriarch of color in their community and paired art with compelling audio from interviews. My analysis attunes for listening to images (Campt, 2017), closely accounting for the affective frequencies emitted by the visual testimonios and where they land on my body (meenadchi, 2021) of both the collages and autoethnographic memos.

Findings elucidate the importance of an arts-based pedagogy, in tandem with content centering the experiences and histories of BIPOC, specifically WOC, students. The FlowersArchive intentionally pushes archives to center WOC margins (hooks, 1984) - reclaiming, re-historicizing, and disrupting the archive and redefining what is preserved. I included art-based methods through the collection and creation of this project to foster these skills in both the young people and educators who will apply them in their classrooms. Centering the collage art piece, the visual testimonio, showcases art as a legitimate and rigorous form of knowledge. These visual testimonios are not simply a video compilation of the notable women’s lives, but rather provide a kaleidoscope re-historicizing of their lived experiences & contributions.

Author

• Wendy Barrales, New York University