In late February, 10 San Antonio artists selected by UTSA’s Democratizing Racial Justice research program gathered on campus to kick off a yearlong residency aiming to further their social justice-themed work.
“There were sparks happening,” said performing artist Marisela Barrera, who applied to the program with a new project to follow her recent Donkey Lady performances and video.
Barrera was selected along with Briana Blueitt, Veronica Castillo, Anel I. Flores, Andre Renteria Menchaca, Amalia Ortiz, Cruz Ortiz, Tanesha Payne, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson and David Zamora Casas. Each artist receives $10,000 to support a proposed research project, and all will gather in October for a public presentation of their results.
Some among the 10 artists knew each other and some were meeting for the first time, but Barrera said all made a commitment to “support each other’s work and process” during their residency terms, spread out over spring, summer and fall terms.
Barrera will be among the first to publicly present the results of her research project, with a free work-in-progress performance of her “Lechuza Guide to the Lone Star State” at Jump-Start Performance Co. on Thursday evening.
‘A Tejana from the border’
Barrera will set aside her popular Donkey Lady persona to become the Lechuza, a legendary owl-witch figure with ancient origins and a distinctive presence in the Rio Grande Valley where Barrera grew up.
“She gets to discuss certain issues of living in Texas, as a Tejana from the border,” Barrera said. Audiences will meet her as she evolves away from her traditional role haunting wayward men, misbehaving children and anyone else who has wronged her.
Barrera’s middle-aged Lechuza is seen “through the lens of her final nights as a shapeshifter … because in her world, once she hits 50 this shape-shifting from human to Lechuza doesn’t exist anymore.” The character represents the wisdom of aging and experience, and the strength to persevere against injustice.
Barrera said life in Texas has become politicized, and whenever she takes the stage, she’s “entering a politicized dialogue just for existing in some spaces.”
Having the funding to develop her project arrives as affirmation that her theatrical work matters, she said. It has also allowed her to bring on collaborators such as musicians Joe Reyes and Odie of Buttercup and actor Michael Roberts to expand her scriptwriting and performance vocabulary.
‘The reality of marginalized folks’
Performing artist Amalia Ortiz said the artist residency has allowed her to solidify a core group of collaborators she worked with for her 2019 UTRGV master’s thesis project The Canción Cannibal Cabaret.
The group of musicians has taken on a new name, Las Hijas de la Madre, for her project titled Punkera Diatriabas, which she has described as “a Chicanx feminist punk outcry for social change.”
Both Ortiz and Barrera received Department of Arts and Culture Individual Artist Grants for the initial phases of their projects, which can now move from what Ortiz described as an underfunded “labor of love” to a more fully realized result.
And the social justice focus of the Democratizing Racial Justice program aligns with her worldview and artistic aims, Ortiz said.
“As a woman of color, as a Chicana from South Texas, my worldview is just shaped by that experience of growing up in poverty,” she said. “How the forces of power shaped the reality of marginalized folks is something that just permeates my work.”
Creating platforms for “the reality of marginalized folks” is a succinct way to summarize the goals of the Democratizing Racial Justice program, which started in 2020 thanks to a $5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.
As explained on its website, the foundation’s Higher Learning program issued a call for proposals from multidisciplinary, humanities-led university teams working to address racial inequality. Of 165 applications, teams from 16 schools were selected, including UTSA.
After prior events, including an October performance by pioneering Black scholar Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, project leaders Alejandra Elenes and Kirsten Gardner created the multidisciplinary residency program.
Gardner said the residency application invited artists working on a social justice- and community dialogue-themed project to “tell us what it is, how this funding might support the project and change things in San Antonio.”
New ways of thinking
This is multimedia artist Briana Blueitt’s first residency program. For her summer project titled “Liberation Lineages: Linking Afro-Diasporic Fights for Land & Food Sovereignty,” she will use her skills in videography, portrait photography, graphic design, research and writing to create a zine and experimental video focused on her ancestors from the east Texas freedom colony Magnolia Springs.
The Democratizing Racial Justice residency will not only support her work but also helped her shape her ideas into a structured project.
“I didn’t really know what the full project was until this residency gave me a container to put things into,” Blueitt said.
Once all of the resident artists complete their project terms, Gardner said, the program will convene a public presentation in mid-October for each to present their “products,” a term Gardner prefers as a catch-all, given that the research-focused program made no stipulations about what kind of work gets produced.
The work done by artists connects directly to policymakers, she said, by inspiring and introducing new ideas.
The artists “provide a new way of thinking … to create a more just society,” Gardner said.
To follow the progress of residents as they offer glimpses into their work, check the News and Events section of the Democratizing Racial Justice website.
