[narrator] Art Loft is brought to you by.

[announcer] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[narrator] And the friends of South Florida PBS.

[voice-over] Art Loft, it's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard as well as a taste of the arts across the United States.

[mark] Making my work is me trying to understand my past.

[voice-over] In this episode, identity, the way artists look inward to create outward-facing works of art.

Making my work is me trying to understand my past.

What certain things meant.

Making my work is a healing process for me.

Memories of healing and specific foods and remedies my mom would make.

I work in many different mediums such as painting, textiles, fabric dyeing.

In the materials there is lace fabric that reminds me of my mom and the specific lace she uses.

Also there is fabric dyeing in some of the pieces.

There's also some photo transfers in the pieces that shows imagery.

My work recently has been more focused directly on my family.

I haven't been able to go to my studio.

So I've just been working at home in my parents' living room.

Making work while my dad watches me and sometimes while I'm making work my dad has tried to give me advice on my pieces.

His heart is in the right place I'd say.

My work is very nostalgic and thinking about the times of childhood.

I saw this image of my aunt's husband and in the original image, he had a crown.

He won the award for the King of the Church for his church.

I was really drawn to this image.

Maybe it was his facial expression, his sense of pride in the image.

When my family sees my art it's different per person.

For my mom, I make a lot of images of my mom.

She gets really annoyed at the images, but she really loves my quilts but most people are really excited about it and really excited to see themselves in art.

When the viewer sees my work, I want them to be able to tell that I really care about the people I'm making art about.

[voice-over] The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU presented, House to House: Women, Politics, and Place.

Dr. Jordana Pomeroy says the exhibition is not a history exhibit.

Rather, it explores the journey of women to gain equal rights in the US from the 19th century to today as seen through fine art.

Dr. Pomeroy says each piece, including two dollhouses, speak to the role that women have played in overseeing their households, but also moving from the private domestic space into public forum like Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death coincided almost simultaneously with the opening of the exhibit.

Another group of works in the exhibition is a broadside by the Guerrilla Girls, a group of women who dawn gorilla masks to stay anonymous and advocate on behalf of women in the arts.

Pomeroy says the significance of the exhibition is that we have a long way to go to gain equal rights for all in the United States.

[naiomy] How do you say your last name?

Guerrier, how do you say Guerrero in Spanish?

How do you say it?

Guerrero.

So it's Guerrier.

But you know we have the same last name?

I do know we have the same last name.

I think it's interesting, you know, the Haiti and the Dominican Republic art histories where we come from and how I feel like I've always kind of found this last name.

If you look far back enough also has a tie to Haiti and vice versa, those are the traces of like all the different layers of the ways that you can be multiple people, multiple histories at one time.

Yeah, cultural identity is layered that way or even our participation as subject within landscape inform our identity, both culturally and politically, but that's how we become a person.

That's how we become a subject.

I like collage and I like landscape because landscape is collage, it's layered anyway, stratified.

And I want to layer abstraction as a formal imposition on an idea of landscape, on a view of landscape.

So the views of images, they're less about the thing then there are kind of the perception of the thing and everything else, how we read it, I try to make that into a form.

[naiomy] I think for me what I've gathered is that like a lot of the the star and the subject in your work is Miami.

I'm doing this type of work where trying to use this landscape that I actually have access to.

To talk about all kinds of things like motion, movement, larger geographies.

So there's a lot of Miami and the fact that Miami is also tropical and subtropical makes it like easy to talk about, an experience that is common to Caribbean folks.

And so photography plays a big role.

I photograph the places that I am in and so this is where I live, where my studio is.

So there's a lot of Miami.

There's a lot of my house and photography makes certain specific places become part of a subject of a work.

And so then what I need to communicate is not, it's not an image, it's a text, it's a name, it's a story connected to a place.

It's an event that has occurred.

So the work deals with that layer as well.

So how do you know when it's done?

There's a lot of looking.

There's a lot of just staring at a work and it's like head scratch, flip it, come back the next day.

There's a lot of that.

If I don't have a deadline.

So for example, this work behind you, I've been working on it for a while now, but it's close but I know when it's done, when I interrogate the work it can answer the list of question that you should come to admire.

Yes!

That's such a good answer.

So that's how I know when it's done.

So if it cannot answer that then I'm gonna be embarrassed, right?

Because what I imagine is, I imagine standing in front of the work and someone asks me the question about the work.

And I'm like, yeah, it's not in this piece.

I'm like, oh, no, should it be in this piece?

Then I have to put it in.

When artists are creating work they don't necessarily, I think that they're operating from a place of stillness that is very like introspective.

And they're not necessarily thinking about reception because it gets in the way of the process.

Oh, no, for me reception is key because if there was no other people on the planet, I will not do this work.

I will probably do a different work.

No, I definitely make it work where I need someone else to see it.

Yeah, you think of the audience.

Yeah, but I don't totally imagine who that is.

I just imagine a presence.

A viewer.

Yeah, yeah.

And not the easy one at the museum or a gallery.

Yeah.

No, no, it's in a home, in a domestic setting and the work is doing its little poetic work.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, I imagine that.

[voice-over] Next up, a StorySlam, where members of the deaf community share how their identity is seen in the world.

Milwaukee PBS takes us there.

The great thing about stories is that they reflect the real complexity of our lives.

When someone is telling a story and someone else is listening, the brainwaves of the speaker and the listener actually sync up.

It's actually the way in which we build relationships and connect to each other.

Ex Fabula is a Milwaukee nonprofit.

And our mission is to connect Milwaukee through real stories.

We've been around since 2009 and we put on StorySlams and workshops where people share their true personal stories.

And in the process, build community, connect with each other and even heal.

We started out with these StorySlams which are events where anyone could put their name in the hat for the chance to get up on stage and share a true story.

And all the stories are on a theme.

So that hopefully over the course of the night, we really just explore all the different human experiences that are out there.

[interpreter] We have two different American languages here.

We have sign language for us to be able to express ourselves and not only in the signs that we're using off our hands but our full body.

It's everything, it's our facial expression to show our mood or our temperament.

And it's kind of like intonation in English, how you speak and how you say certain things and you emphasize certain words.

We are able to do that as well.

Mayra and Jose are two community members who have been shaping this particular collaboration.

When we first started the project we knew it would be really important to have people from the deaf community helping to design the project.

[translator] Ex Fabula has been a great experience for the deaf community and I think it's gonna be great for the hearing community as well, to hear our stories, probably something that they haven't heard before.

Hello everyone and welcome to our very first deaf StorySlam.

The storytellers are gonna be getting up and sharing stories on the theme of labels.

At the StorySlam, we will have around six people get up on stage and share a true personal story.

Now these stories will be signed.

So we'll have interpreters who are interpreting from ASL into spoken English so that both the deaf community and the hearing community can appreciate the stories.

[translator] A little bit in that time in the '80s and '90s, it was seen upon that deaf people were almost kind of embarrassing.

It was shameful because we would try to learn how to talk.

But a lot of people would say that our voice was not as eloquent or as beautiful as a person who can hear.

We were monsters.

[interpreter] I wasn't ready to be done working.

I want to work, I have skills, I am capable.

I want to work, but nobody was willing to give me a chance.

[translator] I let them know that I was very interested in this job and I wanted to know they were too.

And they said, yes, we are very interested.

You have all the qualifications we are looking for but we do have one concern, you can't hear.

And with being able, not hearing, we have safety issues.

So hearing that, as you probably all know, was a huge frustration.

I couldn't believe that that was the one thing that was holding me back from this job that I wanted all my career.

[interpreter] I should mention that I had a son at the time.

My son's school would sometimes call me, I would step in the hall, take the call five minutes and then go back to doing meal prep for lunch.

And then I got a warning from this boss saying that I was in violation of the rules because I was using my phone.

And I'm like, are you kidding me right now?

Because you're on your phone all the time.

You just have it up by your ear while you're cooking and you're talking and you're cooking at the same time.

I can't do that 'cause I'm deaf.

I gotta step into the hall and do my business and come back.

While I talked today about being an independent woman, you know, just all the hardships I have gone through to figure out what I needed to do to be as successful as I am today.

You know, those barriers are important.

They make you who you are.

They develop your character, but you know, I'm very happy to be where I am now.

[translator] But my uniqueness wasn't just a college student trying to find identity.

I was a black, deaf man, trying to find my way in the world.

My topic, I focus on communication and how to overcome through adaptation.

I wanted to focus on this idea that I didn't want to worry about barriers and how to have other people take control of my story.

When I thought I was gonna have to make a change I wanted to take authority and find that way that I needed to by myself in order to be successful.

When I was in college I honestly didn't think that a support system was needed.

I thought independence meant me and myself only.

I thought I could make it by myself meant that I was successful.

But we had to think about making sure you had support if it was teachers or emergency contact or someone who could just ask you if you were all right.

I wanted to make sure that I had that transparency with individuals in my community as well as I had with my family.

[interpreter] I decided that I wanted to make sure that I had a company that supported me in the communication realm and the expertise that I brought because I am qualified to learning how to communicate with the hearing world.

[translator] Am I proud?

Yes, I'm proud to be deaf.

I'm proud to be Mexican.

And if you don't like me.

[interpreter] I want people to be more aware.

Deaf people have been through a lot.

I want you to acknowledge that we know what we're talking about.

Keep that in mind as you meet us out in the workforce or in other daily situations, be our ally, come alongside us.

[voice-over] Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art at Perez Art Museum Miami consists of 37 artists hailing from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and the United States.

This exhibition gathers a kaleidoscope of voices from around the globe who all have different histories but all have a relationship with the black experience.

These works address the themes of identity, colonialism, spirituality, and everyday life and assert their power to be seen.

PAMM curator, Maria Elena Ortiz, says you should start the exhibition with the large scale triptych and graphite by Kara Walker entitled, Securing a Motherland Should Have Been Sufficient.

Walker questions if it is possible to secure a motherland from the oppressor without destroying something or someone else in the process.

These pieces are very colorful.

So while there is a lot of pain in this exhibition the curator says there is also beauty and joy in viewing these works of art.

Nevada artist, Tia Flores, has been working with makers deep in the Amazon to develop their art.

A practice that helps keep who they are alive.

PBS Reno shows us how.

What brought me to the Amazon jungle was a friend of mine by the name of Barbara land and she was doing some research in South America and fell in love with that particular part of the country.

And she was working with a group, a family group, in this village called Ayacucho village, which is deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle.

And as she was working with them, she noticed that they wanted to perfect their craft so that they could bring a sustainable income to their economy.

So she reached out to me and asked me if I would be willing.

And after several years of declining, I finally agreed to go.

My desire to go there was to work with the women there and help them perfect the craft so that they could bring some more money to their economy by selling natural wares that they were able to create there in the jungle and sell to tourists coming by from all over the world.

And that was a really enticing thing for me because I really believe that the arts can really improve an economy and make it sustainable.

So it was right there where my belief system was.

So I was very excited to venture into the jungle.

We're actually in the Peruvian side of the Amazon.

So how we traveled there was from the United States into Lima, took another flight into Iquitos.

The only way to get to Iquitos is either by boat or plane.

And we took a boat and it takes about three, four hours.

As you travel up the Amazon River with a motor boat and then we're able to get into the Ayacucho village and the environment and the people were just amazing.

You're surrounded by this abundance of beauty and life.

And you see life cycle in its natural form.

How everything has a purpose and a reason and timing.

All the fruit that's produced by the different trees, a particular monkey eats that particular fruit or it drops into the water for a particular fish.

And I'd have to say the people are just as amazing because they love that environment.

They cherish that environment.

They're stewards of that environment.

The majority of the people who actually live in the river villages, like Ayacucho, are residents of Peru.

And what they've done is they've chosen to, you know, venture into that environment and to live that lifestyle there.

Basically they're just three, four generations old in there, and they're still figuring out how they, you know, what they bring to that environment and how they can be good stewards of that environment.

And it's really exciting to see them, you know, bring their own style to that craft making.

Because of the diverse, natural materials that everybody has access to in the Amazon, you're able to make all different kinds of crafts from a simple thing as a bracelet by using palm and cording that, and, you know, decorating it with seeds to a beautiful, elaborate necklace.

Basketry is just amazing there as well as, you know, necklaces and bracelets that, you know, might use the spine of a particular like snake or a piranha, you know, the piranha teeth that's really popular.

My first trip to the Amazon was in the summer of 2018.

I was able to return in the spring of 2019.

And again, in the spring of 2020, right before the pandemic hit.

The president of Peru had put a mandate that no travel could take place.

So to get home was basically, it was in two parts.

Our first main objective was to get out of the jungle.

Boats were prevented from traveling.

So how do we get safe passage out of the jungle and to the city of Iquitos?

In fact, the minister of tourism and the police, the federal police, met us to guide us to Iquitos.

And then once we got to Iquitos that was the next step.

We knew the only way to get out of a Iquitos was by plane and we needed to get to Lima.

And at that point we needed permission from the Embassy.

We were very lucky 'cause through our conversations and working through local officials here in Reno and Senator Cortez Masto, we were able to secure a seat on a repatriation flight through the US Embassy to fly out of Peru and get back safely to the United States.

As an artist, I could really tell from this experience how much it influenced my artwork and how much it really wanted me to take a deep dive into my own craft making and to utilize the natural materials that I have around me and how I can incorporate that into my art.

So that was an exciting part to experience that.

[voice-over] Continue the conversation online.

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Find full episodes and segments on a brand new website, artloftsfl.org, and on YouTube at South Florida PBS.

[narrator] Art Loft is brought to you by.

[announcer] Where there is freedom, there is expression.

The Florida Keys and Key West.

[narrator] And the friends of South Florida PBS.