Zoraida
Lopez
Diago
During the Fall of 2011, I received a grant to work with youth in Colombia, teach photography, and create an art installation based on the UN Declaration of Children's Rights. I accomplished this by focusing on where children sleep, because the physical location of where one sleeps often indicates their economic status in society. The art installation included three separate areas (reflecting lower class, middle class, and upper class) that visually interpreted where children sleep, family portraits of my students that I took during visits to their houses, and an interactive art component that allowed children to write their personal and societal dreams on pieces of cloth and hang them in the gallery. The installation also included a video recording of an overnight performance piece. I covered the gallery floor with messages of Colombian citizens searching for their disappeared family members (mainly children); I wrote these messages by staying in the gallery over a 24hour time period.