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OakBook Interview: Favianna Rodriguez
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Theo Konrad Auer
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Last Updated on February, 26 2009 at 01:18 PM
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Theo Konrad Auer talks with Oakland artist, activist, and Facebook prankster Favianna Rodriguez about the city, her work, and Shepard Fairey's unethical art.
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In a past article for The Oakbook, I wrote that I believe art in Oakland does not begin with hipsters and end with activists – contrary to the image put out there by some in the media. Having said that, much of what is great and vibrant in our local art community is political. There are many artists working towards the sort of practical and progressive change exemplified by local activists like Van Jones. One such artist is Favianna Rodriguez, a Fruitvale based artist/activist who has a long history working with poor people. She has helped co-found the Eastside Art Alliance and her artwork has been featured in many high profile art shows – the most recent being the survey show “There! New Art From Oakland” at the famed DiRosa Art Preserve in Napa.
She has a new book of political graphics she co-edited “Reproduce & Revolt” out now, which has contributions from comic artist Eric Drooker, noted local style writer Estria Miyashiro and hipster art-star Shepard Fairey. The latter artist has come under fire lately for plagiarism and Favianna Rodriguez’ research for “Reproduce & Revolt” was one of the major citations in the first high profile news account of Fairey’s unethical practices last year.
I recently had the chance to speak with high profile artist, educator, activist and my one time high school journalism classmate at Skyline High School about her printmaking practice, the recent tragic killing of Oscar grant and the aftermath of it, plagiarism and profit, and the positive dialogue art can inspire.
Theo Konrad Auer: I have heard you speak of feeling that in your life there are no lines between the many roles you take on: artist, activist, graphic designer, organizer. Political art is not always considered as seriously as perhaps should. What do your particular political insights bring to your work and why is political artwork often marginalized.
Favianna: I believe that all art speaks on someone’s behalf. Art reflects our social and political reality at all times. The problem for me is that the image we receive of that reality, is overwhelmingly from a euro-centric, male-centric, and hetero-sexist lens. If you make an assessment of even the museums and art institutions in your own community, you will find that the artists in those collections who are people of color can be counted on one hand. What this tells me is that our stories are left to the margins.
The stories of immigrants, of working class folks of color, of single mothers, of young black and brown men being locked up day after day at alarming rates – those stories are left out of the “art world,” and yet, these are the majority of the stories in the country, in the world. This demonstrates to me that the art world continues to be an elitist body and that it caters mostly to the needs of white men. When I make work, I talk about the things I see in my own community, in the lives of the people around me. My work addresses themes of globalization, war, immigration, women, sexuality, and prisons. When I talk about those themes, my work gets labeled as political. It actually also gets labeled as women’s art, Latino art, Chicano art, propaganda art, and a host of other terms.
Those terms don’t really bother me.. My intention is to change the conditions of the communities I represent. I have been given a tool to do that and it’s through art. I view art as a tool for education, agitation, and social critique. Through an artistic practice, it is possible to confront the multitude of images of disempowerment fed to us by mainstream media.
We as artists practice art in a time of increased media monopoly. Particularly when we talk expose the many complexities of globalization, corporate power, and eroding civil liberties. Some of these messages are a threat to the political establishment, the art world included. And so I believe we are not only marginalized, but also censored. If you examine, for a moment, the political history of this continent, and consider that in the past 100 years, artists have been prosecuted, tortured, and even killed for speaking out. We should never underestimate the power of art in creating radical social change. For this reason, political art will, for the most part, be something on the margins.
The level of self-censorship in main stream media leads to one-dimensional coverage of issues that are important to all citizens – the war in Iraq, our dependence on oil, the true costs of “free trade” and globalization (to name a few). In this context, the voice of dissent becomes of even greater importance. We, as political artists living in the most powerful country of the world, have a responsibility to expose the stories that are most censored, and to build ties with the people on the ground who are working for social change. Art alone does not transform the world. Mass movements do.
T.K.A.:What is the usual process for creating one of your prints?
F.A.: I am very open about my creative process because I don’t believe in keeping my techniques a secret. I learned from others and believe that my skills should be transferred, so that they continue. I have hundreds of ideas for pieces floating around in my head. I am constantly inspired by what I see around me, the dialogues happening with my peers and the daily routine of the life my family lives is something that inspires me. The way most of my political posters get done is that an issue will really move me, whether that will be the deaths at the US-Mexico border, or the genocide in Palestine, or the fact that my family members cannot get a driver’s license because they don’t have papers.
I usually reach out to organizations who are working on the specific issue, or they reach out to me. We collaborate on the primary message of the piece. We discuss what it is that we are trying to achieve – are we trying to educate the viewer? Are we trying to expose an injustice? Once we have a solid message down, I will develop the piece and my collaborators will help in the reproduction of it. The piece usually becomes a piece with which to organize, and so distribution is key in the success of a poster. The organization I work with usually distributes the pieces, both offline and online. I also produce much of my prints at the Taller Tupac Amaru and Kala Art Institute. Overall, I try to keep a balance between posters I do for large causes and the stuff I do just to make a statement, such as my recent poster on Sex Positivity.
I use a number of techniques for developing my pieces. I take photos and manipulate them in digital programs, I draw characters and colorize them on the computer, I cut ruby film, I develop monotypes, often I recycle images from the internet or from random photos here and there. The printing techniques I use range from screenprinting to letterpress to monoprinting to digital printing.
I am increasingly using the internet as a tool for production and projects. I recently posted some fictional scenarios on Facebook as a way to get people discussing. It was great! I found out that overall, I seek out projects in which I can spark some sort of dialogue.
T.K.A.: Oakland has recently experienced many tragedies – chief of which in the minds of many is the killing of Oscar Grant and the rioting (or what some like Davey D. of KPFA’s Hardknock radio have termed “rebellion”) which followed. As a longtime activist seeking to solve many of the issues that contribute to this and a colleague and friend of the creators of the “Oakland/Gaza: Justice for Oscar Grant. Justice for Palestine” poster – What is your perspective on all these recent events? Where does Oakland go from here?
F.A.: First, I have to say that I am proud to be a part of a collective that can so rapidly develop art in response to the challenges we face as a people. Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes, my co-conspirators at the Taller Tupac Amaru, developed posters almost over night in response to the murder of Oscar Grant. They used this opportunity to draw a parallel to the murders in Gaza. The posters instantly spread online and dialogue was sparked. This is precisely what we should be doing, is responding through our creativity. That is one of the best ways to bring people together.
I had mixed feelings about the rioting, and I reached out to others who participated in the rioting, in order to build a constructive dialogue. I was a teacher and youth mentor for many years, working mostly with kids who were graffiti writers, and so I quickly learned how easy it was for young people of color to get snatched up, arrested, and put into the prison system. So when I see young people in a confrontational situation with police, I get very nervous. I know that people of color will be treated much differently than their white counterparts. At the same time, I am not sure how helpful property destruction is for our fight. I don’t think it empowers us, I think it actually hurts us more than empowers us.
That evening, my family sat at home and locked all the doors. They were scared that the crowd would move from Downtown Oakland to East Oakland. The opportunity to engage them into the real fight for justice for Oscar Grant was lost at that moment, and instead, fear took over. I realize the media played a role in this, but again, what this did for us in a larger perspective is unclear to me.
Where does Oakland go from here? Well, the number one concern for me is the black and brown violence in Oakland and the decreasing safety of our streets. I grew up in Oakland, attended Oakland schools, I was scared as a child, I was scared as a teen, and now as an adult, I am still scared at times. My neighbor of only 18 years of age was killed a few months ago, while he was walking his dog. I hear about the deaths of too many young black and brown men. This is something that we clearly need to address as a community. With the same energy that we rally behind Oscar Grant, we need to rally on a daily basis to help the thousands of young people who see violence as their only option. I see so many contradictions about Oakland. On the one hand, we stand up when we see a young brother get unjustly killed by police. But what do we do when our brothers die every week? What do we do about the fact that most of these murders go unsolved because we are pressured to not be “snitches.” We have to remember that it’s bigger than one incident and that it’s time to value life, overall.
T.K.A.: You have a new book out you which you’ve co-edited, Reproduce and Revolt. How did come together? Where the idea for it come from? What do you seek to do with this book?
F.A.: The book is an extensive collection of contemporary political graphics collected from around the world, including art from many of today’s most exciting street artists, poster makers and graphic designers. All of these images are granted to the public domain, to be freely used for political purposes. The book includes over 500 graphics from 200 artists in 12 countries.
This book was a collaboration between artist-activist Josh MacPhee and myself. I knew Josh through other political activism artwork, and came across the idea when he started circulating the call-out. I thought it was really important … to make it reach [out to] multilingual communities. I reached out to him and talked about collaboration and he was open to it. Within months we had an artist’s call in circulation in not only the United States, but also parts of Mexico and Latin America.
The inspiration for the book project came from the feeling that there was a desperate need for a bank of political, royalty-free graphics. The majority of graphics that have been circulating in left circles – flyers and posters and things – were things that had been recycled from the 70s and 80s and were continually being reused. And while some of them were amazing and great graphics, the times have changed and evolved - the kinds of issues we are dealing with have evolved. It was really important that there was a new injection of visual ideas…into the environment for activists, artists and designers to use to create.
T.K.A.: Of the many artists in your new book – Shepard Fairey, a asthmatic street artist who was recently described as “strangely wholesome” by the New Yorker – has recently been at the center of ever expanding storm of controversy that seemingly began when it came to light fairly recently that many of the images he uses were wrongly appropriated – and used without giving credit to the folks who created them. In your research for the book, some of these facts came to light and I believe you were one of the folks who provided the factual backbone for that news story. Fairey is also in your book and now his famous Obama poster image is at the heart of another controversy What is your take on his work: in general, in your book, and the recent controversy surrounding it?
F.A.: My primary of critique of Shepard Fairey is that he commodifies images of radical social struggle with the intention of making a profit off of them. He represents, in my view, a larger problem which is that resources and stories are taken from a community (in this case, mostly third world struggles), and then reappropriated with no sort of end benefit to the very communities he is representing. He represents images of, for example, the Black Panther Party, the Cuban Revolution, the Russian revolution – and while these may be hugely popular, they are not doing much to bring about true social change. In fact, they are contributing to a historical amnesia.
It upsets me that he would make graphics of our revolutionary icons, sell the work for thousands of dollars, even sell it back to working class folks via cheaper merchandise such as shirts, and yet, at no time is he initiating a critical dialogue about the context of these images. He does not talk about the history of the Black Panther Party – his posters do not trickle down to people on the margins. His art circulates and continues to be recognized by mostly the elite, and increasingly, the corporate elite. It seems dangerous to me when an artist who is labeled “political” or “revolutionary”, would reuse movement graphics for the very corporate forces that would love to see these people’s movements defeated. After all, people movements are about social transformation, a more balanced distribution of wealth, and a rigid control of how our planet’s resources are used.
How sad is it that he uses revolutionary Russian iconography to make a campaign about ultra-capitalism (Saks Fifth Avenue campaign?) That, in my view, is unethical. Too often, trans-national corporations take the message of change, sell it back to us, and behind our backs violate the very principles for which we fight. The reality is that corporations are responsible for the waste on the planet, the degradation of workers rights across the world, and the devastation of our natural resources. So I have harsh critiques of Shepard for his work with corporations, specifically when he has miscontextualized our very rich and meaningful political history.
At the same time, I hope to make clear that my intention is not to censor Shepard nor trash him. His work in included in Reproduce and Revolt and folks that have used the book frequently use his pieces. The critiques that are raised are about his practice, not about him as a person. The national artist collective I belong to, Just Seeds, has excellent posts about the subject.
T.K.A.: You helped found the Eastside Art Alliance. How did the organization come to be? Tell me more about what it is all about and what the future holds for it as an entity, idea and movement?
F.A.: The EastSide Arts Alliance (ESAA) is an organization of artists, cultural workers, and community organizers of color who live and/or work in the San Antonio district of Oakland. ESAA is committed to working in Oakland to support a creative environment that improves the quality of life for our communities and advocates for progressive, systemic social change.
I am a co-founder of the EastSide Arts Alliance and its one of the things I am most proud of. I was approached to become an ESAA core member when I was very young by a cultural worker from Oakland named Greg Morozumi. I was taken into the ESAA family, mentored, and trusted with the responsibility of helping run the organization. We would run the group as a collective body. We were an inter-generational group of organizers, cultural workers, artists, and techies and our power lied in the fact that we were committed to having a space in our community.
I remember when we were evicted from a space for painting a mural about police brutality. We realized early on that gentrification by artists played a huge role in the dislocation of our communities. So our model was a different one – we sought to establish a multi-racial, people of color-centered, artistic space to bring together the people of our community. It took seven years to identify the right building and to garner the support to purchase it. What that taught me was that we, as organizers, have to have longterm vision when it comes to creating social change. Transformation takes time, years – and we have to be active about setting big goals for the things we want to achieve.
In 2007, ESAA purchased a building which houses 16 units of affordable housing, 2 commercial spaces, and a mixed-use cultural center. There is no other space in East Oakland where the predominantly Asian, Latino, Native and African American communities can share common ground to create a cultural dialogue of understanding and solidarity.
T.K.A.: What does the future hold for you as an artist? Any shows coming up? I know you are in the Monster Drawing Rally…what time are you set to go on?
F.A.: I never thought I would publish a book, and now I’m working on figuring out my next book project. Video used to intimidate me, now I incorporate video into my art installations. I enjoy collaborating on projects with my fellow artists and techies from TUMI’S (the company I helped found) and the Taller Tupac Amaru (our print collective). We recently completed an installation project in which we pulled feeds from Twitter and Google News that contained the words “illegal alien.” That opened an entire new set of possibilities in terms of how technology could affect, influence and shape art.
This year I am traveling almost every 10 days, mostly teaching and speaking, and so I am becoming more and more of an educator, advocate, and national voice for radical artists, especially Chicanas and women of color. So I would say the future holds for a new set of intersections in terms of career path. I will always be an artist, but I may try other forms of art. I am slowly realizing how much I like to do performance art so that may be something I explore further.
This year will be my first time participating in the Monster Drawing Rally. I will go on at 8 pm. Drawing in front of people to me is a performance. I take in the energy of the room and channel it into my drawings. I used to be very insecure about drawing in front of people but now I love it. I’m also excited to be supporting a cutting edge institution like Southern Exposure. |
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