I've been thinking about, "Where does he exist?"

And he exists with me and within my own body.

México Lindo is so much more than, insert stereotype.

I loved thinking about the everyday person choosing an everyday object to feel powerful in some way.

Coming up, we highlight some of our favorite pieces from the past year of “createid.” Stay tuned.

Major funding for “createid” is provided by the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Hi, I'm Marcia Franklin in the Blue Galleries at Boise State University.

Behind me is a work by Iraqi-American artist, Luma Jasim, that's part of an exhibition called “Drawing the Sky: Artist as Witness.” Jasmin and the other creatives featured in the show all came to the United States from countries that have struggled with conflict, political strife and war.

Their experiences there and as immigrants informed their art on an intimate level.

We'll tell you more about the exhibition in a moment.

This past year, we've also met other artists whose work honors cultural intersections, whether they occur in community, family or the individual.

Here's a sample.

Each time that I visit I think about asking them, but it never feels like the right time.

And they don't bring it up.

So I asked my mother.

She said, "Do it now."

But I don't know if I can tell their story.

My name is Hallie Maxwell, and I'm an interdisciplinary artist.

The title of my show is "Alternate Heirlooms."

So I'm thinking about the other things that I received from my family that aren't just physical heirlooms, but the stories that have been passed down to me.

I've been really interested in figuring out how to tell the story of my family - in particular, my family history of my great-grandmothers and my grandparents surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

With this body of work I became really interested in what I have inherited with the passing of these stories down to me, but then also how that history exists within my own body as well.

Almost all of my direct ancestors survived the atomic bombing except for my great-grandfather.

He was a police officer, so he was in the epicenter making fire breaks at the time that the atom bomb was dropped.

They knew that there was going to be some sort of bombing in the city.

So he sent for my family to go to the outskirts of the city.

So they survived by being just far enough away.

My great-grandmother looked for him the day after the bombing and she couldn't find any of his remains.

So she only gathered some sand in the spot where she believed that he passed away.

So that's all that we have left of him.

And so I've been thinking about, "Where does he exist?"

And he exists with me and within my own body, perhaps in ways that I don't fully recognize yet.

And so I made this work made of mizuhiki cords.

I formed them around my body and then I closed the form and placed it upon this porcelain slip that I painted onto the concrete floor.

My work tends to be very repetitious.

I'm really interested in how by making something over and over again, you are connecting to tradition.

Traditionally this material is used in the process of gift-giving.

The mizuhiki cords are either in white and red or black and white.

Red and white is for more celebratory occasions, where black and white is more mournful and for funerals.

The specific knot, the awaji knot, it symbolizes a wish to be tied to someone forever.

"To protect yourself, you're supposed to go under the desk."

The work "Mama" is purposely a very quiet work.

I see it as kind of a whisper, where it's asking the viewer to engage with it and get low and listen to it.

The sound within the suitcase is interviews with my grandmother.

My grandmother was nine years old at the time, so she was at school when the bomb was dropped, and she remembers it quite vividly.

"Everyone was running, crying and running, you know, to the home."

It's just been an interesting experience to hear this whole story that she's always holding within her.

The work behind me is called "Kuzu," which the title is referencing a vining plant.

It is made of thousands of mizuhiki cords.

I became interested in the idea by Nicolas Bourriaud of the "radicant artist," which a radicant plant is a plant that proliferates through its vines rather than through its roots or through seeds.

Essentially a radicant artist then is one that gets their identity from migration and travel rather than being rooted in one place.

I definitely see myself as sort of a wanderer.

Sometimes it feels like I've been given something that's not mine to hold.

I see myself as a translator of these histories that have been passed down to me.

I've felt a sense of urgency to share their stories.

It's something that I've worked long and hard to have the courage to come forward and be so personal.

I think my work is the most successful when people begin to think about their own personal family histories.

And it sparks those thoughts of, "Oh, I need to reach out to my grandparents.

I need to talk to them.

I need to get their history recorded as well."

So those are the moments that I really enjoy when I share my work.

I'm more interested in that yearning for understanding.

Ballet Folklórico México Lindo!

{”LA NEGRA” CRESCENDOS} When we come out to perform, we are doing so much more than just wearing a dress and dancing at this event.

We are literally representing the culture for people who may or may not know what Mexican dance is.

{SONG CONCLUDES} {THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE} {ANNOUNCER THANKS IN SPANISH} [MONIQUE MICHEL] My name is Monique Michel.

I am the artistic director of the Ballet Folklórico México Lindo, which is my dance company.

Then we have our five “zapateado” which is here, one.. The word “ballet folklórico” literally--just, “ballet,” meaning we have ballet as a base, “folklórico” just means folk dance.

“Lindo” means beautiful.

{COUNTING, MARIACHI MUSIC, FOOTSTEPS} I was born and raised in Los Angeles and I started dancing out there at the age of six.

I stayed with my dancing all through high school, all through college, and we performed all over and it was beautiful.

And I realized that within my dance company, I had found my community.

Here in Idaho, I really wanted to recreate that sense of community.

And I'd like to say that I have.

{LAUGHS} I started my company in 2003 in Nampa and I started with four students.

And, since then, I've grown and I now have 50 dancers.

{RHYTHMIC FOOTSTEPS} The way I teach is how it was taught to me.

And the dances are the same that when I did when I was a child, when I was a teen.

They are literally passed down from one to the other.

{RHYTHMIC FOOTSTEPS} {SONG CONCLUDES, LAUGHTER} Sometimes people don't even know what Mexican dance is.

And they're like, “Is it salsa” And I'm like, “No.” {LAUGHS} “Is it flamenco?” “No.” {LAUGH} {FOLKLORICO MUSIC SWELLS} We are storytellers.

It is folk dancing.

And folklore is exactly that.

It's stories.

And they are passed down from one to the other.

We have stories usually about love or requited love or lost love.

We have stories about animals, about birds, we have accessories, and we tell stories, in this case, with our bodies.

It's evident in the movements of, you know, the hands or the feet or the placement of the, you know, the shoulders or looking over or the posture, the movements of the skirts.

So, very much, it's very physical.

{REHEARSING} Five, six, seven, eight.

Perfect.

And skirts, I want you to catch the skirts.

That's the most important thing.

There's so much diversity within México.

The more you look, the more you find.

It's evident, you know, in the different styles of the dresses and maybe this one has puffy sleeves and this one has a long skirt or this one's tighter.

And all of that is intentional.

{MUSIC, CLAPPING} [DEVON GARCIA] A lot of people don't realize that Mexico has a lot of influences in it Like, we have African influences, we have a lot of European influences.

There's just, like, so many different parts to it, and I feel like representing it this way can let people see so much more of Mexico and what it's about.

I moved here originally from Arizona.

And in Arizona, we have a lot of Mexican culture there because we're very close to the border.

And so when I moved up here, there was like a lot of lack of that.

You know, I felt a little out of place.

But ever since coming to the group, I felt more, like, recognized.

I felt like more people understood me.

{RHYTHMIC FOOTSTEPS} [STEPHANIE HAAS-PEREZ] I'm from Cancún, México.

So, just being able to connect through the dance with my culture is just like something really special to me because it makes me feel close to home and like, I feel like sharing my culture is something that I love and I just enjoy doing that through dance.

[CHRISTINA CHAPMAN] It enriches the culture and it helps people understand our culture runs way more deeper than just one costume.

[MONIQUE] I want my dancers and our community and people that, that see us to know that México Lindo is so much more than, insert stereotype.

{LAUGHS} So much more than Day of the Dead, so much more than Cinco de Mayo.

We are literally representing the culture for people who may or may not know what Mexican dance is.

[KARLA CRUZ] We love coming together, showing off, showing off our talents, showing off that we are not just hat, dress, we are women; we are powerful.

If we get together, we can create something beautiful.

{REFLECTIVE GUITAR} [MONIQUE] Representation matters.

Representation is huge for me.

I want my dancers to see themselves in the arts personally, professionally, educationally.

I want them to know that who they are matters.

The arts are for everyone, and yet they belong to no one.

My thinking is, “You want to dance, I want to teach you.” Period.

I've had people come in and they're like, “Well, I'm not this” or “I'm that” or, you know, and I say, you know, “You need to leave that at the door.

You are welcome here.” As a teacher, you just never know where your influence is going to go.

And for me it's about making my students feel seen.

{HEARTFELT GUITAR} On the surface, this looks like a dance studio and we perform and we share and we learn and we laugh and we create memories.

What we do is we form community so that people can come authentically as themselves to share the beauty that Mexican culture is.

{HEARTFELT GUITAR} {MUSIC CONCLUDES} Now, all our stories can be seen on our social media channels first before their broadcast.

and they include shorter videos, including one we produced about this show.

Here's a look.

The exhibition is “Drawing the Sky: Artist as Witness.” And it's an exhibition of four artists who are making work about political conflicts, the legacies of colonialism, and things that they've experienced in their life.

I'm Kirsten Furlong, and I'm the gallery director of the Blue Galleries, which is here in the Center for the Visual Arts at Boise State University.

All of the artists also identify as immigrants to this country.

Kiana Honarmand is an artist originally from Iran, and her installation is about the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran.

There are 3D printed hands that have the names of women that have either been killed or imprisoned.

Women who were fighting for women's rights were taking off their headscarves and cutting their hair.

And so the artist is using synthetic hair to represent that in the exhibition.

Luma Jasim is an artist originally from Baghdad, Iraq, but has lived in Idaho for many years.

She has an installation that's really about her identity.

So she sees it as like a story, like a self-portrait.

I hope that people leave feeling like there is hope.

Like if these artists can experience these things and still do their creative work, and be generous enough to give that creative work to an audience, I think that is a hopeful act.

One, two, three... Woohoo!

People may not think of art as it relates to human rights, but we believe it's a really powerful way to engage with a lot of the ideas.

I'm Christina Bruce-Bennion, and I am the executive director here at the Wassmuth Center.

This new building is really the first time that the center has had an indoor space or a structure.

We're lucky to have 28 pieces of art in the building.

The vast majority done by artists from Idaho.

Some of our artists have a refugee background and others are part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

And so, people who have these varied life experiences where that idea of human rights and how important it is for us to all have our human rights honored and our dignity, you know, centered in our communities, and how important that is.

Some of the pieces were commissioned more for a particular space.

When you come into the building and you come up the first set of stairs, you'll see on the wall a giant s It is based on a story about a young boy here in Boise, Isaiah Anderson.

And he was always really generous with wanting people to have popsicles and friendship.

Unfortunately, Isaiah passed away very young.

Local artist Stephanie Inman had this beautiful idea of connecting the popsicles and creating a sun.

Isaiah's favorite saying was “Be the Light.” And so no matter how old you are your actions can be the light for someone else.

Filip Vogelpohl, who did this beautiful mobile in our entryway, really wanted to be involved and do something here in the building, because he felt a very strong personal connection in his own family.

His grandmother survived the Holocaust by being one of the last kids put on a Kindertransport out.

And so he felt very strongly that had that not happened, he wouldn't be here.

This is a mosaic done by a local artist from Reham Aarti.

And in this particular piece she was thinking about sort of t the power of education to help us push against the darkness of ignorance.

The art is maybe a way to open hearts differently than always coming at it from a cerebral or fact-based way.

I think that sometimes these themes and ideas can be really heavy.

But, art is just a different way that allows us to think about it I became focused on the idea of, “What if I made a broom that was not a sweeping, functional broom, but existed purely as one of these power objects that people have made it out to be throughout the years?” My own family, we have “broom beliefs” like, “Don't take an old broom to a new house,” “Don't sweep your grandfather's feet,” things like that.

But my family believes in not speaking the evil.

So we wouldn't explain why you wouldn't do those things.

So in the archives, I was finding all of these lists of broom beliefs, but they actually would explain.

They'd be like, “Don't sweep someone's feet or they might die,” or “Don't sweep a girl child's feet because she won't get married.” I started thinking like, “Why the broom specifically?” When you make them, it's all rotational weaving and tension.

You have to constantly be holding it taut, moving it, manipulating it.

So I feel like that might have been the reason why the broom was picked, because you're having to put so much of your own physical energy in it.

I loved thinking about the everyday person choosing an everyday object to feel powerful in some way, whether that was to heal or to harm or protect.

We hope you've enjoyed this collection of “createid” stories from the second season of our series.

If you'd like to see many more examples of the wealth of creativity in Idaho, check out our Instagram and Facebook pages, as well as our YouTube site.

Just search under “createidahoptv.” For “createid.” I'm Marcia Franklin.

Thanks for spending time with us.

Major funding for “createid” is provided by the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.