'I am striving to create change in our communities through art, beauty and dialogue'

University of Kansas faculty are striving to advance knowledge, interpret our world, solve problems, spark innovation, create beauty and catalyze imagination through their research, scholarship and creative activity. Through the “I Am Striving” series, we’ll learn more about what inspires KU researchers, as well as the goals and impact of their work. 

Q&A with María Velasco, professor of visual art

Explain your research as you would explain it to someone outside your field, such as your grandparents. 

I am an artist. And I work with different mediums like, sculpture, installation, drawing, animation, and film. I am generally interested in identity, gender, displacement, and vulnerability. And I use my artwork to question the structures of power around these issues and how they impact us.
 

What does your research look like? What methods do you use? 

My work is collaborative and interdisciplinary. And it involves doing research and site visits, making with my hands, and, of course, immersing myself in the community to the best of my ability, talking to people, and doing lots of listening. Every project looks different. But most of the times, they take the form of a site-specific installation, where there are many elements working together to create a sort of an experience of the art that oftentimes elicits participation and even co-creation on the part of the viewers.

What inspires your research? Why are you passionate about this work? 

I believe we come to this life to thrive, not just survive, but first we have to understand what stories we're telling ourselves. And where do they come from? When we examine the circumstances of our lives, in light of socio economic, or racial or gender markers, we begin to see what institutional discourses created them in the first place. And from that point of view, we can then challenge the status quo and take a deeper look at what are the things that we take for granted. 

How does your research directly impact your field, society, Kansas and the world? 

By working with the community, sharing stories that have been suppressed, and creating art that captures ideas of heritage, belonging and shared values, it is our hope to promote social justice and equity in the local communities in Topeka, in the region of Kansas, and in the United States as a whole. 

What is a recent study/example of work you’d like to share? 

I am the director and lead artist of a project titled, Reclaiming Home: Remembering the Topeka Bottoms, which tells the stories of Black and Brown communities that were displaced through urban renewal of the '50s and '60s. So what we're talking about is more than 3,000 Topekans being forced to leave their homes and businesses in the Bottoms district to make room for a real estate development and what is now Highway 70. And with that came a deep sense of loss, loss of home, loss of place, lots of accomplishments that were sacrificed. It's a situation where people didn't have the clout to prevent it. So Reclaiming Home is working with the community now to reconstruct the neighborhood using stories, storytelling, community mapping, film and art.

I am working with an interdisciplinary team. And we are doing primarily two things. First, we are filming oral histories with the former residents of the Bottoms. And we're asking them to share with us what it was like living in the Bottoms, and what was the impact of the displacement, not only for them, but also for their descendants. We have been talking to the community, assisting with events, and telling people about the project and sort of recruiting in that way and asking people if they want to share their story. They've been in touch with us, and we've done our best to create multiple opportunities for people to get in touch with us. It's a story on a volunteer basis and we have compiled so far more than 30 interviews. And people keep wanting to tell their stories, and at this point that we're a year into it. They see what is happening, we have shown the trailers, we've shared some of the progress with them. And people seem to be very, very excited and very, very hungry for this kind of project to occur. And what we hope is to give back to the community something that was taken away from them. But not only that, to also change the beliefs that people have created around certain communities that have been vulnerable, immigrant communities in general.

It's hard to imagine this, but more than 20 blocks were bulldozed over. And with that, decades of Topeka's history, historic buildings, thriving businesses, people's homes, all of that was gone in less than 10 years. So what I am doing as an artist is I am recreating the neighborhood and bringing it back. The homes, not the houses— the houses cannot be brought back, but we can bring the homes back. And so I am creating prototypes of homes that have the stories of residents carved along the walls, and it can be handheld and manipulated as if it was a toy. You would turn it around and on the roof of these houses are the maps of the old Bottoms neighborhood. And so people get very excited to look at the map and try to find their home or their great grandparents’ home.  

What do you hope are some of the outcomes of your research and work? 

One of my favorites scholars says that big societal change start with intimate changes of heart, with movement, getting together with somebody, listening to them and their story. I hope my art does the same thing. And through beauty, that it changes people's minds and hopefully leads to action and to any ways in which we can better the world we live in.

As a socially engaged artist, I feel the urgency to work with communities and beyond the institutional walls and to have meaningful conversations that counteract Eurocentric and white supremacist narratives. We are creating opportunities for dialogue between the former residents, their descendants, and also the generations to come. The project validates the former residents’ experiences, their descendants, but hopefully also, for the general public, it changes their beliefs and attitudes.