Artists
El Salvador
Roxana Leiva
Discrepancies and Conditionalities
24.06.24 19.07.24
Roxana Leiva is an artist and educator born in El Salvador and living in Rohnert Park, California (USA), where she teaches art to high school students at Marin School for the Arts, and, during the summer vacation, she dedicates her time to professional development with a focus in arts and cultures of the world visiting abroad. On 2024, Roxana came to ´ace to focus on her own artistic practice and production through a project that revisited images from the solidarity posters during the Latin American dictatorships of the 20th century to reconnect (reimagine/reinvent/repurpose) them into contemporary times as a sequel of the history of the politics from back then to today.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The theme I explore in my work is the movement of humans and the discriminatory behaviour that encounters them in new nations based on positions of power that have existed since colonial times due to race. Since Jose Guadalupe Posada with the social class struggle in Mexico, to the labor movement in California, and the international human rights support during the military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua and El Salvador, printmaking has played a key role in speaking up against human rights abuses. Now that the military dictatorships in Latin America are placed within history, some aspects recorded in texts, photos and videos, but missing in the integration of current migratory patterns, I intend to create a series of work that will visually recall popular images from the human right movements from the 60s, 70s and 80s and continue their paths in a creative and contemporary significance within our current sociopolitical struggles.
BIO
Roxana Leiva
1976 | El Salvador
Lives and works in Rohnert Park, California (USA)
EDUCATION
MA in Education: Art
Teaching Credential: Visual Arts
MA Studies: Latin American Arts and Culture
BFA: Illustration
GRANTS & FELLOWSHIPS
2019 | Education Latinx Narratives Project. Smithsonian Libraries, Washington, D. C. (USA)
2019 | Advocacy Leadership Institute Fellow. National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, Washington, D. C. (USA)
2014 | Museum Latino Studies Program Fellowship. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (USA)
2012 | SOMARTS Curatorial Residency Grant for the exhibition Mourning and Scars 20 Years After the War. California (USA)
CONFERENCES & RESEARCH
2005 | Art as Testimony Loyola Marymount University, California (USA)
2006 | Traces of Memory: the Way of the Cross in Salvadoran History, Universidad San Carlos, Guatemala
2007 | The Political Discourse in the Work of Art for the History of El Salvador, Costa Rica
2013 | Round table guest with the experience of the exhibition: Mourning and Scars: 20 Years after the War, Latin American Studies Association, Washington, D.C. (USA)
Related Activities
Open Studio
Situated Knowledges
Artists in dialogue
17.07.24
On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 17th 2024, we opened the studio to present the processes of the artists in residence of the June-July period to the local public. During the event, Lillian Broeksmit (USA), Roxana Leiva (El Salvador-USA) and Maflo Martínez (Argentina, artist-in-residency thanks to a fellowship from Fundación´ace), shared their work in different ways. We also had a conversation with Nélida Wisneke, a reference in the Afro community. Nélida is president of the Afrodescendant Association of Misiones, activist for the Rights of Afro-Argentinean Communities, professor at the National University of Misiones with postgraduate degrees in Human Rights and Applied Linguistics, popular storyteller and writer.
The three artists that participated in this residency slot have aspects in common in their works linked to a profound exploration and reflection on resistance and survival. Each one, from her particular perspective and context, addresses issues related to resilience in the face of adversity, identity and memory. Opening her creative process, Lillian took us to explore the streets of Buenos Aires through her work 32.351 bananas, inspired by these hybrid and non-native trees that stand out for their resistance and capacity to adapt to urban conditions. Roxana transported us to El Salvador, a country marked by a history of struggle and survival. 32 years after the Peace Accords, her work confronts us with a reality in which the long-awaited society of peace has not yet arrived for many. Through iconic images of international solidarity posters produced in Cuba during the war, Leiva rescues past ideals and invites us to a profound reflection on the post-war period, identity and the search for a better future for all Salvadorans. Maflo, for her part, focused her work on identity processes linked to the territory and the Afro communities of Misiones. With a tender and poetic gaze, she addressed in her mural painting the emotional and identity wounds of the collective of which she is a part, creating a bridge between the personal and the political.
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