Art of Storytelling 2022

Title: Something Brown
Artist: Christian Orellana Bauer

Website: cargocollective.com/christianorellanabauer
Materials: Photography, cyanotype, digital prints, paint pen, poetry
Description: “Something Brown” is an exploration and representation of both the ambiguity and clarity of the word "brown" in reference to ones skin color through my own family's relationship to immigration, race, and assimilation. The work shown here is a small portion of a larger collection. Constructing one's racial identity is a particularly complex process in the United States for obvious reasons, namely our history of oppression, imperialism, and our deep roots in the time period of colonization as defining functions of our institutions, culture, and governing systems. Racially marginalized communities (and marginalized communities in general) often find themselves in the odd position of defining their identity in relation to the dominant social group, in this case whiteness. This relationship in the context of racial identity puts the individual on a spectrum in comparison to whiteness based on the various social, economic, regional, and cultural backgrounds that everyone carries with them. This can be a tumultuous and confusing process as there is no guidebook that is given to anyone defining where they might fall on this spectrum. The dissonance between the simplicity of a physical trait of an individual (such as brown skin ) and the convoluted nature of the racial construct defined by the white supremacist structure can be overwhelming at times. The name "Something Brown" is negation of this complexity and an expression of the confusion these parameters can cause. These themes are what this work discusses through my experience of continually going through this process of exploring your racial identity. My hope is that viewers consider the nuance and complex nature of this relationship and perhaps reflect on the nuance and complexity of how their own identities relate to this larger racial construct and its social/cultural effects on us all.
Related or Inspired Works: This work is part of a larger body of work which forms a poem:

Once we were happy
Now we are brown
Just what we look like
Just who we are
"Perdí mi país"
"Eso de Cuenca..."
"Ugh, I'm so white"
"And I'm so, so, sorry"
But do not be sad
For you are American
Lonely, so lonely...
Lonely American
Happy, yes, happy!
Happy American!
Just what we look like
Not who we are
Once we were happy
Now we are brown
Once we were happy
Now we are brown
Artist Statement: Christian Orellana Bauer is a multidisciplinary artist working in Portland, OR. They were born in Cuenca, Ecuador and moved to Portland as a child. Growing up as a multicultural BIPOC in a majority white city and existing between multiple cultures throughout their life has immensely influenced their artistic practice, perspective of the world, and identity. They graduated with a B.A in Arts and Letters from Portland State University and have shown their work in galleries and events around Portland and Oregon as well as having been recognized by NPR in 2018 under the stage name Iro and the Moon. Their work is a method of exploring both their own identity and a wide range of external themes through this multicultural lens often considering the concept of an ethnocentric v.s ethnorelativist viewpoint, intersectionality, the idea of cultural belonging, and its relationship to race.

Title: The Citizen
Artist: Francisco Perozo
Materials: Oil on canvas. [The original painting was donated to the United World College of Dilijan on May 2019]
Description: The Citizen is a child of deep-cover espionage between Russia and the US. She lived her first years in the United States as a citizen born within its borders. Like many children, her English name and her identity were written on her blue, American passport. During her childhood, an abrupt visit from government officials to her house made her discover her parents' real names. Moments after, her Russian name and her identity were given to her on her red, Russian passport. The spy swap made it to the news, and both countries’ intelligence honored their agents for their services. The Citizen and the other agents' children, on the other hand, were preoccupied with their new names and lives. The Citizen started her Russian lessons knowing that she was no longer welcome in the place that she knew and loved. This painting shows the US-Russia dichotomy in one person who is part of both and none. The Citizen taught me that identity is a work in progress, one that requires active and personal development. Her story made me reflect on my own privilege: I have always known and have never questioned that I am Venezuelan, and I am allowed to visit the place where I am from.
Artist Statement: I am an environmental studies major and an art minor fourth-year student from Caracas, Venezuela. Before coming to LC, I had the privilege to study for two years in Dilijan, Armenia. I painted for the first time on that campus. There, I met truly inspiring people from all over the world, who shared with me some of the most fascinating stories. The subject of this portrait is one of them.

Title: “There Goes the Neighborhood…”

Artist: Anika Bednar
Materials: Roadmaps, Tissue paper, Printed research, 3’x5’

Description: We don’t teach our kids the truth about segregation. We don't want to acknowledge or take responsibility for it.

Our government created segregation where it did not exist before. Our government made it impossible for developers to build housing for black people and for realtors to sell to black families. Our government built highways through black communities and forced black people into public housing, which it then declined to maintain. Our government gave white people loans and low mortgages, built them well-funded schools and new homes in the suburbs. Our government gave whites the American Dream while systematically disadvantaging black people, robbing them of the basic human right and the single most valuable source of generational equity—a home.

Today, bias and discrimination are just as pervasive as in previous decades. In this project, I wanted to visually represent our government’s deliberate miseducation about the history of segregation, and why and how it is still around today. The main image—a redlined map of Brooklyn—represents what many of us are taught: that segregation happened in the 20th century, and then the Civil Rights Movement fixed everything. This narrative glosses over the countless forms of discrimination perpetuated by institutional agents of segregation—our government, mortgage and real estate companies, police and HOAs. This web of intricate and deliberate actions to create inequality is reflected in this piece as the obscured, fragmented text behind the redlined map.
There are no simple solutions to this systematic strategy of discrimination. There is no easy way to right these wrongs. But the least we can do is to take some responsibility for the fact that there is inequality because we wanted it this way. And it will take just as much aggressive and systematic action to start dismantling this system of oppression as it took for us to create it.

Title: Foug Elna Khel ; Oriental Oud

Artist: Hashim Salman
Materials: The Oud's face is made from spruce. The tuning pegs and fingerboard are constructed from ebony. Maple, walnut, palisander and mahogany are used for the bowl.
The Oud is 72.5 centimeters long, with a 19.5 centimeter neck. The soundbox is 53 centimeters in length, with a 33.5-centimetre maximum width and 18.5-centimetre depth.
Description: The oud or, in Arabic, al-ʿūd, is probably best known in the West for being the predecessor of the European lute and guitar. But it does have an independent life of its own in the history of early music, rooted in medieval cultural exchange between East and West. Beyond the West, there is a traditional story that Lamak, sixth grandson of Adam (the very first one), hung the remains of his son in a tree and used the desiccated skeleton to form the world’s first oud. The first evidence of instruments we can really say are ouds are in the art of the Assyrian and Babylonian era dating back to 2000 BC.
Despite how many civilizations, languages, empires, and cultures have ceased to exist; al-ʿūd remains as one of the very few symbols that represent the history of the region and its people. Each civilization admiring its distinct tune, each civilization adding their own touch to it making it what it is today; one of the oldest & most encompassing instruments in the world.

Foug Elna Khel is an Iraqi song, which captures and matches the melodic intentions of the instrument. A translation of the lyrics follow:
There above I have an intimate friend.
Is it his cheek that shone? Or is it the moon up above?
By God, I do not want him; his love troubles me.

Your cheek shone, my love, and lit over Baghdad.
God took his time creating you, and was indeed generous.
By God, I am taken with him; I don’t know what to do with myself.

By God, O water course, give my regards to them.
It’s so hard being apart; I do long for my loved ones.
By God, I do not want him; his love troubles me.

2022 Ray Warren Symposium Virtual Art Gallery