 I'd like to welcome you here today, I'm Elizabeth Sackler and this is of course the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and today's program Tribute to the Disappeared. Introductions and my introductions for programming are very important to me because I feel that they create a context and they set the stage for the program that you're about to hear. But as I was thinking about what I might like to say today I realized that there are three things that are very true. I think the fact that we have this full room attests to my three points. One is that the state of political realities and the electoral process that is going on right now is one of the stages that is set. The second is the state of the world at large. When I speak to friends who are in Europe they're talking about apocalyptic migrations of refugees and the refugee crisis. So that sets a stage. The third, there have been over the years books and films about regimes, about coups that tell the stories of those who have been disappeared. And I brought today and I'll pass them around but you can't keep them. You have to throw them in the back because they're going home with me. The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander. And if you haven't read it you might want to hear about what happened in Brazil. Missing. Some of you who are my age might remember missing which is about the American assisted coup in El Salvador. This film came out in the 1980s and it's easily available on Amazon and it's amazing unfortunately that the more things change the more they stay the same and they're coming closer to home. So I'll pass that down so you can see it and take a note. And the third is Z. Many of you may or may not remember that there was a coup in Greece in the late 1960s. When I mentioned this to somebody who was of a younger generation significantly, couple of decades younger than I said I didn't even know there was a coup. Well I had the good fortune actually of being in Greece before the coup on a number of occasions and it was a significant change. So this is something that might interest you because as we look around at our own landscape we're not accustomed to coups in this country. So I don't know whether or not we know what they look like when we see them. In any event in this world you don't disappear or in these worlds you are disappeared and that is very significant. I'd like to read to you this was for anybody who might have seen it on NBCnews.com. I'm going to read this to you because it really speaks to Andrea and her work. As the parents of 43 missing students protest in front of Mexico's Supreme Court Friday on the 17 month anniversary of their son's disappearance, a Mexican artist in New York asks Americans to reflect on the ways Mexico and the United States are connected. This is a quote, we are all connected with what happens in different places says Andrea Arroyo in a phone interview with NBC Latino. We all benefit from the laws and privileges of our government and we should also be aware of how those laws and privileges make us complicit in the exploitation of different people around the world. Arroyo who is the curator of an art project that honors a disappeared from Mexico and other victims of violence and injustice worldwide will co-host a round table and here we are with Isabella Martinez who I welcome and thank from who is an associate professor at John Jay College of criminal justice. And they are here to talk about using art to empower people socially and politically. The article continues, today you can do something Arroyo said, explaining how art can help people express their convictions and that something I am doing is putting my brush on paper to contribute with my creativity to the struggle of the families and the struggles of other people fighting for justice. The art project tribute to the disappeared now features more than 300 artists from all over the world and was inspired by the AIDS Memorial Quilt which started in 1987 as a way to document people whose stories were largely neglected. Arroyo explained that when people feel alone, alienated, art has the power to connect them immediately with other perspectives and experiences and tribute to the disappeared aims to connect the stories of the 43 students who disappeared on September 26, 2014 with the hundreds of women who were murdered as well as other communities including Nicaragua where mass killings have been under reported by the government and the media. Martinez who is writing a book about undocumented immigrant youth also sees connections between the stories of the 43 students with Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man who was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. We now come to think of before Ferguson and after I think in our country. Over 13,000 immigrant youths facing deportation proceedings in New York from 2012 to 2016. If you take a look at the underlying causes of violence against marginalized black and brown youths in the Americas, you can see many connections said Martinez to NBC News. The Latin America and Latino Studies professor believes that U.S. foreign trade and domestic drug laws like mandatory minimum sentences and police profile have largely impacted many communities by escalating violence, forcing small farmers out of business, spiking immigration, and creating an environment where marginalized youths are targeted with state-sanctioned violence. Both Martinez and Arroyo use writing and art to challenge people to push beyond stereotypes, drugs, and violence. People often say, and you'll have to correct my accent because I always tend to speak Spanish with an Italian accent. Es so pasa en Mexico? Eh? That'll do. That happens in Mexico when they think about drug trafficking and violence, said Arroyo. But that doesn't happen in Mexico or South America because people over there are more violent or corrupt. We are part of a larger global system and what happens in Mexico is connected with what happens in the United States. I'd like to be formal in the beginning. I'd like to welcome again Isabella Martinez and to read Andrea's biography to you. Andrea Arroyo, she is my friend. She is also an artist, curator, and cultural advocate. Her artwork has been exhibited in 40 individual and over 150 group exhibitions and is in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the New York Public Library, among others. Honors include 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, groundbreaking Latina in the Arts Awards, official artist of the Latin Grammys, New York City Council Citation Award for Achievement in Art, and many more. Her commissioned works include projects for the International Museum of Women and the New York Botanical Gardens and the New York Women's Foundation. Ms. Arroyo's work has been published extensively including in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune. She has been the subject of over 150 features in the international media. Arroyo Andrea is also a curator producing exhibitions tackling socially relevant issues. On September 11th past present future, Art Without Borders and Arizona artists respond to the immigration issue. Her current project, which is what we are going to hear about today, Tribute to the Disappeared, honors the victims of injustice around the world and features over 300 international artists. This is a wonderful program to have here today. It's wonderful to have you with us and I'd like you to join me in welcoming Andrea Arroyo. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Elizabeth Sackler for the invitation and thank you to Sackler Center. I'm very excited to be here. I'd like to thank Isabel Martinez for joining us as well. I want to thank all of the Tribute to the Disappeared artists who are here. Can you raise your hands please? Oh great, thank you. And thank you everyone for joining us. I'm going to go through a lot of images. I'm going to try to be quick. And I'm just going to show you. I'm going to just tell you what the project means for me. I have been interested in issues of social justice, especially women's issues for a long, long time. I have been living in New York City for many years, but in 2008 there was a woman who was killed while she was jogging in uptown where I live in one of the parks. And I was shocked of course and scared and concerned. And it was all over the news and everybody was talking about it. And a few days later the perpetrator was caught. And that got me thinking that women are killed in Mexico every day and nobody really does anything about it. They are six feminicides every day in Mexico. And I started this project that is titled Florida Tierra, which the translation is flower of the earth. It's Florida Tierra homage to the women of Juarez. This is an exhibition shot of the project in progress. This is around maybe 80 drawings. I'm doing 400 drawings for 400 women that have been killed in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas. Each drawing is 12 by 9. And I use simple lines, white lines from black paper to evoke the police chalk line after a crime scene. This image is set on the border and is one of the drawings in the project. Globalization has a huge impact on women in Juarez. The women started disappearing and being killed after the maquiladora set shop south of the border. The official number for the women of Juarez killed is 400. The actual number is in the thousands. This is titled Reboso. And women in the maquiladoras they work three shifts. So morning, afternoon and night. And these corporations and the government, they provide really no services. And many of these women come from the southern states of Mexico to work there. I was just thinking of the fear that women go through when they go to work, like to or from work, because they have to walk the streets. There's no security, no safety. So this is titled Cintura, which translates into waste. Many of these women were dismembered and tortured. And many of their bodies were left in the desert or buried in shallow graves. That's why the title is Flower of the Earth. And nobody has been jailed for the crimes, for the 400 official crimes. There has not been any arrests ever. So I started tribute to the disappeared in honor of people who are victims of violence and injustice. Inspired, as Elizabeth Sackler said, by the AIDS Memorial Quilt. And so far, 300 artists are participating. The project consists of three components. It's a virtual quilt or an online exhibition. There's a series of physical exhibitions and a series of community workshops. I'm going to skip this text. So I started this in November 2014. After 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Teachers College were abducted on September 26. I attended a demonstration in Union Square here in New York City. And I was there the demonstration for about two hours. And then I went home and I was just very upset. I felt totally disconnected. And the following week there was going to be another demonstration. I had to have them every Sunday. And I was reluctant to attend. I felt really really disconnected. So I just went to my studio and got a tote bag. And I threw some paper and some sharpies in a tote bag. And left, and on the subway, I started to write the names of the 43 disappeared students on these strips of paper. And when I arrived to the demonstration, I asked people to help me finish because I hadn't finished the 43 names. And I asked people to help me pin all the strips of paper to my coat. So I walked around like this. And then people really, they got close and they started asking questions. And it really showed me that it was a really different experience, basically. And it made me realize that art touches people's hearts in a very different way. I'm not a performance artist at all. So this is just me just walking around. And this was completely improvised. But it really made me realize, I felt connected. And a lot of people were coming and just asking questions. And they were really engaged. So I thought I need to do something with art regarding this. So I recreated the piece in early 2015 using ink and ribbons. And I wore this piece on the same way that I was wearing the paper piece for the six-month anniversary of the Ayotzinapa disappearances when five of the mothers of the students came to New York to the UN. So I walked in the demonstration in March, the UN wearing this piece. And then it became more of a gallery piece. So it's again just ink and ribbons. So the idea for me, for people to disappear, is to create a mosaic or a quilt of different images. It started as I said in November. By December I already had the images from around a hundred artists. And I started it as a Facebook page. And I published an image every day, a different image by a different artist. So I invited professional artists and I invited everyone else. So the youngest artist is 16. The oldest is 88. Many artists are from Mexico and the US, but I have from all over the world. The original goal of the project at that time, only a couple of months after the disappearances, was to create awareness and generate international solidarity. Right now we are looking at 17 months later. And the goal currently is basically to keep the light of solidarity alive. I think it's very important. So every 26, because of the disappearance that happened on September 26, every 26 of the month I create and publish a new artwork that I make. I just post a tiny little update of how things are going. This was published in January 2016, just recently. And for this piece I use the same style as my women of Juarez project. But I use ink and digital media where the Florida Tierra Project are contained on paper. This is titled 43 Where Are You? And for tribute to the disappear, the concept of disappearance is very wide. So it includes of course the forced disappearances like the students of Ayahuasca Napa or the women of Juarez, but also disappearances that are done through discrimination and invisibility and injustice. This is titled 43 Sons. This was published yesterday to commemorate 17 months of the disappearances. This piece is inspired by a phrase that Mr. and Mrs. Tisapa, the parents of one of the students from the college in Ayahuasca Napa, have been using for 17 months. And it's, my son is your son and your son is my son. When I met them in last year, they suggested that I create something with this phrase. It took me a long, long time to actually put pen on paper and do it. It's been a very emotional journey as well as you can imagine. This is titled 43 Birds, tribute to Nadia Vera. The project is also about making connections. So journalists are killed all the time around the world. There's really, again, many times there's no accountability. Nadia Vera was a journalist who was killed in July 2015 after repeated threats from the government of Veracruz in Mexico. Under his ruling, we have almost 20 journalists that have been killed or disappeared. And it's only in a couple of years. A detail regarding gender, when Nadia was killed along with three other women and a man, the media reports mentioned only the name of the man. So they would say so-and-so who's a journalist was killed along with three women. So the names of the women were not mentioned. So, again, just there's invisibility and re-victimization by the media all the time. So, again, making connections. And I'm going to start showing you now the art from the tribute to the disappeared artist. This is a piece by a talented employer from Guadalajara. Her name is Laura Patterson. And the text reads, the truth will not be silenced by killing journalists. And it's embroidered on a handkerchief. And Laura belongs to an art collective that is called Bordamos Polapas, which is we embroidered for peace. They embroidered cases of feminicides, murders and disappearances on handkerchiefs. And they displayed them in public spaces. This is a piece by Tania Montezuca and his model, Clay. And this is in memory of Anabel Flores, a journalist who was just killed in January this year. Also in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. This is a quilt by the amazing Silvia Hernandez, who's here. Thank you, Silvia. This is titled Morning. And it's cotton fabric and lace with machine piecing and quilting. And she used the photos of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa lace and a printed image of the Virgin of Guadalupe to create this wonderful, wonderful piece. This is another piece by Silvia. And again, it's about connecting issues. Right, with this one you can really think of the young men that are targets in the US. The title is What's Going On and it's Cotton Quilting. And I've shown Silvia's original art in some of the exhibits. I usually show prints of the images with the quilts I have shown as originals. And people love them. They're just beautiful and they're touchable and they're just amazing. So this is a piece by Gianimo and Gian is an artist who lives in Scotland. She's very isolated. There are not too many Mexicans in Scotland. But she made 43 portraits of the students from Ayotzinapa from her studio there. And it took her months and months. And during the process we were in communication and she was always telling me how isolated she felt and the need that she had to actually do something, to create something good out of this horrible thing happening. So this is a portrait of Felipe Alnur for Rosa. And he's the son of Margarito. And I'm going to ask you to just look at his face for one moment. And then this is Felipe's father. His name is Don Margarito. And they look so much alike, right? This is a photograph that was taken by Livia Danski. She's a Brazilian photographer who lives in Mexico or travels a lot to Mexico. This was taken in October 2014. So right like a month after the students have been disappeared. There were mattresses that were sent to the schools so the families were set there. The families are still living there. They have been living there for 17 months. It makes me think of our refugee camp, but in a country that is supposed to be at peace. So please take a look at Don Margarito's shoes just for a second. He wears these traditional waraches even to the demonstrations. Last time I was there we marched for, I think it was four hours. And he does that all the time. And then these are his shoes. So there's an artist whose name is Alfredo Lopez Casanova. And he collects the shoes that the parents of the disappeared used to search for their children. So what he does is that he carves the messages of the parents on the soles of the shoes and then he makes prints. The text reads, I'm Margarito Ramirez. I'm searching for my son Carlos Ivan Ramirez Villarreal, a student from the Ayotzinapa College. He was forcibly disappeared by police along with 42 classmates on September 26, 2014. And they have been since 2006, 26,000 disappearances in Mexico. This is another piece from the same project. The text reads, Roy was disappeared on January 11, 2011. My name is Leti Hidalgo and I'm searching for my son. The title of the project is Guayas de la Memoria, The Footprints of Memory. This is a piece by Nikki Enright. He's from Ecuador and he's based here in New York City. Another piece that uses footprints as imagery. This is a photo by again by Lidia Dansque, the Brazilian photographer. And this is again taken in 2014. It's a classroom in the Ayotzinapa Teacher's College. You see a bunch of chairs just in this array and with the portraits of some of the students. And then you can look at that classroom and then look at this classroom. And this is a photo by Ayano Isha. She's a Japanese photographer based here in New York. And she created a series after the tsunami in Japan in 2011. So it features devastation of a different kind. Again, I'm trying to connect issues and connect people around the world. This is titled Missing 43 and it's a piece by Javier Arango. And he lives in the Occidental Sahara which is disputed territory mostly occupied by Morocco. So this is in the middle of the desert in Northern Africa and 43 people get together, print the portraits of the students and then get together for a photograph to send me for the project. This is titled Lost Boy and is by Martin Koslowski, an American artist based here in New York. He's a political illustrator and he's also the editor of INX, a syndicate of political illustration. This is watercolor and ink. This is titled Fourth of July, South of the Border and is by Felipe Galindo Fego, a political cartoonist who's here. And he created a well-known series titled Manhattan Clan that celebrates Mexican culture in New York. The series tackles immigration and the impact of globalization through humor. This is titled Mother of the Disappeared and is by Carlos Barberena and he's from Nicaragua. And he's part of a printmaker's collective and this piece evokes the work of Mexican printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada from the 1800s, just traditional printmaker wood printing. This is a piece by Denise Delores. She's here. Thank you, Denise. This is the first piece that I got that was created on the iPad and Denise is a talented artist and she's also been a great supporter of the project. Thank you. This is a piece by Augusto Metzli and he's from Spain. And I titled the students' kites. It's watercolor and it's just a drawing of kites with portraits flying on the sky. Recently I was contacted by a Guatemalan artist and he has this idea of creating a project to create, to make a kite to fly over the border of Guatemala and Mexico, which is also a very, very violent area. This is a piece by Sophie Blackout from Australia and it's titled Disappeared. Just to evoke the concept of loss, it's Chinese ink and watercolor on paper. This is a piece by Suco and she's originally from England. He lives here in New York. Her work is about social issues. She's been working on human rights and animal rights since the early 80s. And this is titled 43, the piece that she made especially for the project and it's charcoal on paper. This is a sculpture by Celia Van Juul from Mexico. It's titled The Abduction of Mexico and it's Guajac and Clay. This is a photograph by Yael Ben-Sion and she's from Israel and it's untitled. When I saw this image it really reminded me of the women of Juarez and of the six feminicides per day that happened in Mexico. This is an artist book by Nancy Palupnia. Nancy is here. Thank you Nancy. It's titled Sequence and it's watercolor on folder paper. It's almost like an artist book. Nancy does a lot of work tackling the issue of violence against women. This is a piece by Debra Solomon and she's a very well-known illustrator and animator. This is titled The Graves and it's lithocrayon and watercolor and she published this image in a calendar in 1979 while she was in art school. When I saw it it really moved me and I think it resonates a lot today. This is a piece by Valeria Gallo from Mexico. She is an illustrator. She created a blog that is called Ilustradores con Ayotzinapa and she invited artists to create portraits of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa school. She has gathered the work of many, many artists and they focus on creating actual portraits. She uses embroidery for her work and this is Benjamina Sensualtista, one of the students and this is Fabric Collage and embroidery. I met Benjamina Smother last year when I was in Mexico and even before his son was abducted she had already an incredible story of survival. Christina also has a daughter. We have to remember that most of these families, they have a son who has been abducted but they also have other kids and families and they have been forced to leave their families, their homes and basically their lives in their struggle as they search for truth and justice. This is Cristina Baltista, so this is Benjamina Smother. Last year I spent six hours in conversation with her and she is just a beautiful woman warrior and the hours that I spent just talking to her basically changed my life, changed my whole perspective and I actually think that I learned to listen after those hours. So this is Cristina's family, right? That's Benjamina who disappeared, the boy, you know, happier times and Cristina's daughter is college age right now. The last time I spoke with Cristina she was still trying to get her daughter into college and was having problems due to bureaucracy and cost and just the fact that Cristina has been struggling to get justice and truth for 17 months. This is from a collective of artists that is the Bordamos para Paz collective that we embroider for peace and the text reads, Mom, if I disappear, where do I go? So this collective is a group of artists, they get together usually on Sundays on public squares and they provide embroidered supplies to everyone who wants to participate. So it's led by embroiderers who know what they're doing but they invite everyone. I went to one of these sessions and they were trying to teach me how to do it and they gave up. But the point is that everyone who comes and tries to do this is just investing their heart and their hands and their work for a few minutes or for an hour just thinking of one person or one thing. They usually embroider individual specific cases. So this is made by someone who's not a great embroiderer but the message is beautiful and the idea of the event is that everyone participates. So you go into the public square and you see little kids and men and women and old and young, everyone trying to embroider, trying to learn or at least trying to participate. And many of these pieces are created collectively so if they have a phrase, like two words would be embroidered one by one person and then another one by another person. So they become these just beautiful, beautiful acts of creativity and love. This is by a beautiful artist, her name is Laura Patterson and this is another handkerchief that she embroidered and the text reads, it was the state. Basically it was the government. Very, very simple. The turtle is the symbol of Ayotzinapa which means the land of the turtles. This is a piece by Maria Perez Santis from Mexico. She's from a collective called Malacate in Chiapas and it's just titled Force Disappearance and it's embroidery. I have published many, many pieces by this artist. Her name is Rosa Borraz from Puebla, Mexico. She created this piece in honor of the 2019 girls kidnapped in Nigeria and she used photos from newspapers. So this photo was published at the time and she used it and she created this beautiful piece. Just the idea of an artist responding to a news piece or a photograph in a newspaper and creating something beautiful out of something horrible. And again, I'm trying to connect the issues like Nigeria and Ayotzinapa and Juarez. This is a piece by Virginia Debeke and she's from Argentina. Argentina suffered thousands of disappearances in the 70s during the detectives. There's a great tradition of political art. The models of the Plaza de Mayo sit still there every Sunday after four years. Many of them still not knowing where their children were taken. This is titled The Fall. So Claudia Fuentes is from a collective of folk artists from Mexico and they use traditional techniques to tackle contemporary issues. They use Mexican-Indigenous culture as a source of strength and inspiration. This is a wall hanging that took months to make. It's part of the exhibition 43 Hands for Ayotzinapa, which I collaborated with them. They sent me some works and I sent some of the two to disappear works to Mexico and we had like a binational exchange of art. And this is titled We Are Missing 43. This is from the same group of folk artists. It's from Sabina Cesar Garcia and it's titled Divine Favors. And it's H Copper and Silver. And again using craft and folk art techniques to tackle contemporary issues. Kind of looks like jewelry or a rosary. This is by Santiago Sabi from Mexico. It's titled Flowering We Peel, Acrylic Concanvas. And the traditional dress, the traditional we peel is a source of pride and strength. And these garments are usually treasured and they are passed from generation to generation. And the painting evokes a traditional boreal. This is another we peel by Ellen Benson. She's American, lives in Mexico. And it's titled Ayotzinapa We Peel and it's collage using newspaper clippings, antique textiles, paper and a matchbox. This is a cut paper and watercolor piece by Wenzu. He's from Taiwan, lives in Costa Rica. And it's titled 43 Hands, 43 Eyes. A poem piece by Jessica Lagunas who's from Guatemala. It's titled in Memoria and it's an installation of a jewelry box with bullet shells that includes around 300 bullets. And that's the number of feminine sides that were taken place in one particular year in Guatemala. Another piece that uses bullets. This is by Eliana Hernandez. She lives here in the States. It's titled Life is Short. And these two pieces made me think of the availability of weapons both in the US and in Mexico. And the impact of the weapon and drug trade between the two countries. I have quite a few abstract pieces in the project. This is by Jane Murthy. She's originally from India and is titled Metamorphosis. And she creates these pieces during performances. And this is a piece by Maria Esquivel. She's not an artist. So, when I started the project, I called my mom and I was very excited. I called and I said, mama, I'm gonna do this. And she said, okay. And I told her, you have to make something. And she said, no, I'm not making anything. I'm not an artist. And I said, well, you have to make something. She said, no, no, I'm not making anything. And a couple of days later I received a photograph on my phone just with the title on the subject, 43 Stitches. So she created this tiny little piece with 43 stitches on each side. And again, just thinking of something that somebody who's not an artist can make something beautiful just with their hands and their heart. This is by Lucrezia Urbano from Argentina. And it's titled Orban Landscape. And this piece was created as a collaboration with community people. It reminds me of a shallow grave as well, but it's an abstract piece. So this is a piece, but this is food. So this is a piece by master food stylist team from Mexico City and Italy. And they're dear friends of mine. And I was telling them about the project and they told me we have to make something and they make food. That's what they do for a living. They make and style food. So they make this as a food piece. And it's titled Chicken Hearts and Opales with Guajillo Chiles Sauce. Right? But again, they're not artists. They just want to make something and contribute. And also, I have been one of the components of the project is this workshop that I present. I've been doing them in some of the universities and community centers. And the workshops are open to the public. Anyone can come and we talk about the subject and then people make things. They make pieces for the project. This was created by Sara Sanon. And it's titled Remember and it's called Paper and Collage. And I think in a way she was trying to connect Ayotzinapa with Black Lives Matter. This was created at the workshop at the new school for social research. And it was presented by the new school and by the dream team and the New York Ayotzinapa student front. Another piece created in a workshop at Columbia University. This is by Sasha Hill, a student at Barnard who became a friend and a project collaborator. And he's still very involved today. And this is an interactive piece that is beautiful by Kyle Goyne. Kyle is here. Thank you, Kyle. And so this is printed on reflective vinyl. So the portraits of the students are not really evident when you see them in normal light. But when you photograph them with a flash, they become alive. They appear. So it was just beautiful. This was a very moving moment that attributed to the disappear exhibition when the models, five of the models of the disappear students came. And we were all taking pictures and they were really moved by the piece. We spent probably 20 minutes in front of the piece, which was just, I was crying the whole time. But it's beautiful. So thank you, Kyle. This is, again, the same piece. Miss Hilda Lejideño is standing in front of it. And Miss Hilda Lejideño is the mother of Jorge Antonio Tizapa Lejideño. This is a performance piece by Jorge Baldeón from Peru. And it's titled Without You Until We Find You and it's a performance. It's video. So basically what happens is that a person stands against the wall. Somebody else draws a silhouette around. They move and the other person writes the name of one of the students. So they did this 43 times for the whole performance. This is a project by Chita Rodriguez, who's also not an artist. And it's titled Clothes Lines for Ayotzinapa. What she did is she printed portraits of the students on 43 t-shirts. And I don't know if you have this tradition here, but in Mexico we have the tradition after high school graduation. People write messages on our shirts. Our friends, you know, farewell, keeping touch, you know, funny things, good things. So she created this project and had this event in Pittsburgh where people wrote some messages. And then we were in communication and she sent the bunch of teachers to me in New York. And I had them at the tribute to the Disappeared exhibition and then more people wrote messages on them. And then when we were done, we sent them to the parents in Ayotzinapa. So the teachers have the portrait and a lot of messages from people from the community. So it works in the public space. This is titled the Anti-Monument or the Anti-Monument. And this is a public sculpture project that was created totally in secret, developed in secret. Those kinds of people were involved. One morning they were on the main avenue in Mexico City, the equivalent of Broadway, which is Reforma. And just those kinds of people were there to install this piece. It's actually just steel, just like a regular public sculpture that was created kind of like in a creative act of defiance. And it was installing one morning and everybody was sure that the government was going to remove it the day after because they didn't have any permits, they didn't have any approvals about anything. And you know, public sculpture has to have all this process that is very long. So the sculpture is still there after 17 months. And every 26 of the month when the parents and the supporters march through Reforma, they stop here. The last time I was there, we stopped here and the parents get in front of the sculpture and they all say the names of the 43 students. And then after they finish, they keep on marching and they usually go in front of the main Socalo in Mexico. Another project by a non-artist, she's scattered in Dominguez and she lives in France. And this is titled A Thousand Cranes for Ayotzinapa. She was inspired by the Japanese legend that says that if you fold a thousand cranes, a wish will be granted to you. So she went home and she folded a thousand cranes. And this reads until we find them as to encontrar those. And then she had the cranes and she stole them in the main square in Toulouse, France. Just one cold morning and then you can see people interacting with it. There are other forms of public intervention, this projection of the student faces was projected on the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. And it was during the cultural festival 43 events for Ayotzinapa. And the photograph is by Leticia Estrada and it's titled 43. Another public intervention, this one is in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And this is the Mexican Embassy at night. So these couple of artists went there and projected the 43 and the names of the students on the facade of the Embassy. And they recorded this as video. And I got the video online and I was looking at it and you can hear their voices. They were extremely nervous because this is completely, you know, they don't have any permits. It's actually dangerous to be doing this on an embassy. And Buenos Aires, Argentina has a history of repression that is very, very intimidating, I would say. So this project was also created in secret. They went there one night and made this video. This is another public intervention. This is a group titled Hijos and it's a collective of artists. And it's titled Red Fountains. And the members went around Mexico City's different squares and plazas. And they dyed the water red. So this was for the one year anniversary on September 26th. This is one of the fountains and this is another one. A very simple concept in a way, right? But it's just a wonderful way to make people pause for a second. And this is a public installation by Elina Choubet and she's from Mexico. She works a lot of names of feminicide. This is titled Red Shoes. And it's an installation that has been going around the world. This is in Turin, in Italy. And as she creates this with community members, she gets shoes donated, they paint them red and they install them in public spaces. And more traditional public installation. Just a mural with pace, just pasted on the wall. And this is by Pam Chopes-Cador. He's from Chile. And the text reads alike. They took them alike. We want them back. And it's a street mural in Oakland, California. And then I have another street mural. This one is in Bushwick and the photo is by Laura Anderson Barbata. And if somebody knows who painted the mural, please let me know. It's not signed, so we don't know. So it's in Bushwick. So this is the tribute to the disappeared exhibition at the Chabas Center. It's the installation. And the Chabas is a landmark building from 2012. And it's basically a memorial to Malcolm Mech. Mech's and Dr. Bech Chabas. So you can see the statue of Malcolm on the stage. And I created this exhibition. And I was trying to honor the space and the architectural features as well. And also activate the space in a different way. Making the connections between Malcolm Mech, what happens now, contemporary life. And also different communities in the area. This is in Washington Heights, which is a community with a lot of Latinos and a lot of Eastern Europeans as well and African-Americans. So I was trying to make those connections too. For the opening of the show, we have Paul Sacks performing a song that he wrote about the disappeared. And I installed the images hanging from wire. When you enter and saw these, like just people passing, the images, the paper would move. So it was a very, the effect was really amazing. And so the images sort of look like they're floating on the space. This is the same exhibition. And this is the community wall that I created. This is during the visit of the models from the Sinapa students in September 2015. And here they are standing next to the participation wall. And what I had was an explanation of the project. And then we had hearts of paper where people could write messages for the families. And when the moms came, they also wrote messages for the community. Basically thanking the New York community for the support. In the photo we see Miss Ildia Lejideño, Miss Angelica Gonzalez, Miss Ilda Hernández Rivera, Miss Laura Luz María Te Lumbrec, and Miss Blanca Luz Navar. This is again the same exhibition. The same moms joined by Mr. Antonio Tizapa who lives here in New York and who also does a lot of activism through sports and public demonstration. He runs marathons in honor of his son and his 42 classmates. And here the moms and Mr. Tizapa are standing in front of 12 of the pieces that I had created for every month that the students had been disappeared. This is the exhibition that I, when I took the tour guide to the Women's Right National Historical Gallery in Seneca Falls. It's an installation shot. And so we see the images. I print the images in square format to get like a quilt or a mosaic, the idea of the concept. And this exhibition features around 200 images and also a community participation wall. So you can see some of the people just looking at the images and then some kids actually writing messages for the families. And that's it. I have some media articles. I'm going to skip through this. Sometimes the Flavor Pill, Viva La, Latin Correspondent, Native News. That's it. That's all I have. Thank you. Just one note. I invite everyone to participate. Everyone is welcome. I take new and existing images. The artists keep their rights and they keep the original work. They just lend me the image for the project. I'm having an exhibition and talk at Marshall University in September 2016. And probably another exhibition in September here in New York as well. So thank you. And now let me introduce... Welcome Dr. Isabel Martinez to join me. Isabel is an assistant professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino-Latina Studies. And the director of the Unaccompanied Latin American Minor Project at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. Her teaching and research interests include Mexican and Central American youth immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border, and intersections of race, immigration, and technology. She is currently completing her manuscript title Making Transnational Workers from Youths and has several articles for comment. She received her BA in sociology from Rice University, her master's in educational policy, practice, and foundation from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her PhD in sociology and education from Teachers College at Columbia University. Thank you Dr. Elizabeth Sackler for joining us. I'd like to thank the Brooklyn Museum and Dr. Elizabeth Sackler, Lena Sawyer, I don't know where you are for helping us get settled, and Andrea Arroyo, whose work I've admired for many, many years. So thank you. So I thought we, can you guys hear me okay? Yeah, okay. So Isabela and I were talking for hours the other day, and I think this would be good to have as a conversation. So I'm going to just start by asking you, what is your reaction to the images? There are many reactions, I think, like most of the audience. I guess one of the overarching themes I think of when I see these images is, you know, in this era of globalization, of economic globalization, and I think the globalization, we'll talk about this, I think in a minute of state sanctioned violence. I think what we're seeing is the responses to that, sort of this globalization of heartbreak and grief. And that's what I think the images represent, the heartbreak and grief that we're experiencing all over the world, and in New York City and all over the country, and people's manifestations of that. And I think in a very productive way, one very productive way. The other thing I think about, so there are particular images that, when Andrea showed, I've looked, before we even talked, I had looked at the exhibit online, and particular images had jumped out at me, and the ones that really jumped out at me, they're two sets of images. I kind of grouped them together. I'm not sure if they're supposed to be grouped together, but I grouped them together. Are the shoes, both the shoes of the parents? So there's a series, I think, and Andrea asks us to look at the shoes of the father, then we see the two other images of the shoes of the parents. And then much later, there's the exhibit, I think she's an Italian artist who has a red shoes and a plaza, maybe in Italy, is that where it is? Yes, it's in Italy. And any of this comparison has been made since 2014 about Tata Lolco. So I don't know if anyone knows about the massacre, La Matanza in Tata Lolco, this happened, and ironically the students of Ayotzinapa were organizing to commemorate this event. So October 2, 1968, Mexico City, college eight students, the same age as the kids, the youth who were disappeared in Ayotzinapa, are organizing in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, which is a major plaza in Mexico City, a beautiful plaza in Mexico City. And this is right around the time of the Dirty War in Mexico, where I think kind of like today, there's pretty much unregulated state-sanctioned violence. There are the numbers of youth who were killed, who were in nonviolent protest against education reforms in Mexico range. And again, there are different accounts from hundreds to thousands, never a formal investigation until 2000 maybe with Vicente Fox that didn't find any new findings and didn't lay blame on anyone. So I first learned about this massacre through just the revered Mexican author Elena Pontiusca, who wrote her book La Noche de Tata Lolco, The Night of Tata Lolco, and she documents this massacre. And I want to say, and don't quote me, that her brother maybe had been involved, do you know him at this, Andrea? I don't remember. But one of the passages, and I mean, it has struck, I read this book over a decade ago, has stayed with me, is her, and she was a young woman, she was already a mother at the time of the matanza, and she goes to the plaza, and all she sees are strewn shoes, purses, just personal effects of students who were either killed in blood, right? Or the personal effects of people who were killed. And of course, the bodies were carted off. Or students who were just fleeing in sheer terror. And so this, so I read it, it's always stayed with me, and now in Mexico City, there's a wonderful memorial to the students, the youth of 68, and Museo Memorial, I think the 68, that also recreates that image. I was able to visit maybe five years ago that recreates that idea of just sheer terror and that moment of terror and young people fleeing. And so those images of the shoes just immediately reminded me of that. And the other image, I think reminds me, so I'm a professor, and all of my students are the same ages as the students who were disappeared. And so when I see the desks and the empty desks, I think of, you know, this is very, this could be my students who were disappeared, right? If we were in a different context. And we could argue about the dangers of my students are in here in New York City as black and brown students. And I'm a professor at CUNY, so that's the majority of my students. So those are the images I think that most impact me and move me. So what do you think are the connections between the issues that all of these images address? So I have always been a youth advocate. I've worked, I've been working with youth since I was in college. After college and my research is youth focus. I do research on unaccompanied minors who first, my book is based on unaccompanied Mexican minors who some of them were from the same towns and areas where some, with the Oaxinapa children youths were disappeared, came from towns around there who arrived in New York City and entered directly into the labor market. And now I do some work with the Central American youths who are in removal proceedings. And so how I've thought about them and how I think about all of the youths and these images is that any youths here in the United States is that I think these are, I think our youth are being preyed upon. I think these are acts of violence against a very particular age group and this age group that the Oaxinapa youths were between the ages of 18 and 29. The women of Juarez are very young. I think the official ages are between 12 and 22. The women of Boko Haram were between the ages of 16 and 18. We know about the murders here in the United States against mostly of African-American but also Latino males and females are also teenagers and young adults. So I cannot help but think that these are acts of violence that are specifically targeting this age population. And also we mentioned, and I don't remember if you have images. Well, you have several images dedicated to the journalists but we also, journalists, human rights defenders are being forcibly disappeared. These are the truth tellers and I think that youths are the most honest people and are also the truth tellers. So I also think that the truth tellers are being targeted. So that's one. I think that these are actions, these are acts of violence or state sanction, whether it's implicit or explicit that are happening in context of corruption whether it's a failure to protect young people. So in the case of the women of Boko Haram I had to prepare for this talk and I didn't know this but I had found out, MNC International came out with a report that said that the Nigerian government had been informed for four hours before that attack had taken place that that attack was going to happen and nothing was done. So that's a failure to protect those young women. The sheer targeting of youths, stop and frisk, we can talk about here in New York City and who's disproportionately targeted for these types of policies that are acts of violence against youth. Actively denying justice to victims and their families. There are too many cases to think about here in the United States of exonerating police officers where we have evidence that there is some sort of foul play involved or illegal activity going on with the police officers and there was no need for, that's what I'm looking for, force to be used against these youths. And so those are some. I think there have been inadequate federal responses. I think the Mexican government I'll talk about their responses. It took 10 days for the federal government to get involved in the case. There are videos of the attorney general and his original attitude about discussing the kids of Ayotzinapa and almost this way that was. And this is sparked a social movement, Yame Ganse, right? He was already tired and this was not, he's already tired of people disappearing in Mexico but he was tired of the questioning that had been going on in this press conference about this and the real questioning of the federal government's investigation of this. And femicides. I mean, femicides, I do not think the federal level have been acknowledged appropriately and there's a lot of indifference, I think, around that. So I think those are some things. I have two more things. Okay, go ahead. Did I read out? I think that all of these acts of violence lend a very clear and loud message. Oh, I see the time. About who is disposable in our society and who is not. Black and brown young people, black and brown women are disposable. And I particularly wanted to think about the ways that these people are being disposed. So Michael Brown laid out on a street for four hours. Right? One of the kids that they did find in Ayotzinapa was found tortured with his facial skin removed and his eyes removed. The women of Guadas are found strewn and I know that you pointed to that image as it reminds you of Guadas are found strewn in shallow grays just in the desert. And so I think the act of violence against them and the way that they're being violated I think speaks volumes about what we think about this group. And then the other thing that makes me very angry or very passionate is the ways that the youth have been criminalized as victims. And we can talk about the way that the media has talked about many of these youths from Michael Brown and then there's a lot of rhetoric around whether or not to use the foot of him in his graduation picture he was a high school graduate he was on his way to college versus other images of him that showed him were casual talking about drug use with these kids and trying to criminalize them. The women of Guadas there's always a discussion about good girls and bad girls and that these had to be bad women who were doing bad things and the Ayoti Napa youth the original response is that they were members of a rival gang when in fact what these youths were were college students fighting for educational reform and collecting money to honor really the kids of Tadoloco. So I think those are all common threads the girls of Boko Haramu were going to school and even after there have been other young victims in Nigeria who have been kidnapped by Boko Haramu and when they returned they are often stigmatized they are either looked at suspiciously because they think people think they may have been radicalized or many of them come back pregnant with the child of a Boko Haramu member and so they're stigmatized so across these youth groups who are victims I know this is not a very uplifting topic the art classes are beautiful and I think have hope in them but I'm the cynic in every room I think we all need to hear it so what about women are any of these acts how is gender coming to place here I mean especially in the case of Juarez in Nigeria these are about structural and all these cases is about structural violence but I think in these particular cases there's another layer of sexism and the devaluing of women and one other thing I want to add about and I know that your work focuses on what is this is an epidemic that is spread across Mexico because my work is in Central America and especially thinking about many of the young girls who are in removal proceedings left of Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras they're fleeing violence as well and they're fleeing real attacks on them being women and then the mechanisms of control against the women are a little different including rape although we are seeing here in New York young men who have been raped who made the truck but I think that there are it has been the layer of sexism and particular mechanisms of social control using this one we need to take a break we're almost done so what are some of the ways that groups have challenged this globalization of grief so this is the hope part what I see I for a very long time I believe in coalition building I believe in transnational coalition building I believe in cross racial coalition building one of the most uplifting things I've seen in all of this has been Black Lives Matter activists joining with Ayotzinapa activists in Mexico City and marching side by side with them and this is part of a larger tradition I think of black racialism that talks about being oppressed I'm with my oppressed brothers and sisters wherever they are in the world and so I think that's very hopeful I also see responses from young people and I think one of the things that is different now obviously is technology the facility and how rapidly students can bring attention to an issue organize an issue hashtag an issue it's amazing for someone who when I was in college we were just getting these nice I think the internet was just about to take off and so I have again, thinking about my own students have students who are very aware of these issues are mobilizing around these issues and are using technology to draw attention to these issues and I'm going to shout them out just real quick since we're going to shout out they can sway thank you we have a website changeequalsuccess.weebly.com where they they themselves saw the connections between Black Lives Matter and are talking about it and creating artifacts about it so I think that's very helpful and then I also have seen mothers so in terms of gender responses we're seeing mothers of the victims as marching side by side with the mothers from Ayotzinapa which I think is very powerful and I think with the mothers of Plaza de Mayo Argentina as well so any other women responding in any other cases that you want to talk about there's been also this is also something that I think is interesting there's been pressure on the Mexican government so right now there's an independent on back up federal investigation that was absolutely debunked very early on the explanation for what happened to the kids totally blamed Don Narco Carteles the kids were burned this was the official federal government story the kids were burned and dumped in a trash site basically that was debunked and teams from Argentina came in and basically said there was no way that there would be and there was no evidence of the kids this was just a story that through forced confessions they had been able to come up with so one kernel of hope I think too is that an independent team of investigators has been brought in to investigate the disappearances and the groups that are pressuring for the continuation of the investigation and for cooperation from the federal government there's one great group the Nobel Prize Women's Initiative which again is transnational women from Iran women from Guatemala a US woman women from Kenya from Northern Ireland who come together and are using their status as Nobel Peace Prize winners to push for the truth to come out and I think that's very powerful something and then the last thing I'll just mention is there's another group that's women who have been organizing and fighting for justice to be justice for the women of Juarez for years and years and years have also taken advantage I think of this opportunity with this focus, this intense focus on human rights violations in Mexico and have come up with a group called Bani Vosas Mexico and so again try and there's some work around how to label I guess the disappearances and the murders of the women in Juarez to be covered under Human Rights Commissions and investigations and so there's a lot of legal maneuvering too going on to bring justice to Mexico and those are women so thank you of course yeah so if anyone has any questions at this point the question of the Mexican government to the sculpture to all the art guerrilla workers who've been doing have they have you gotten any reaction from them was that sculpture that was put the metal sculpture was recorded for has anybody like reacted or well the people who created the project were sure that it was going to be removed the next day but it wasn't it was people were actually taking turns to kind of guard it for a few days just to make sure nothing happened and then they started planting flowers around and I think the government was just taking a back a group of people can actually organize this well and then people actually welcome the sculpture like the whole community actually uses it as a memorial so I think the government has been very surprised by all of these reactions and actions are there any organizations on a community level that you actually can have people like community watch when people get together so that that violence can actually be reduced or monitored could you say that there's a lot of young women that are being targeted is there anything that's organically happening in these communities so that they understand there's a high level of violence against women that can get people together because people have husbands they have brothers they have you know sons that can go out and work together so that this kind of thing is not you know often after the fence I mean there's a lot of community organizing that's happening to yes to basically guard their communities but there's also a lot of fear and we're seeing I mean it's pretty audacious to forcibly disappear 43 young people and it wasn't hidden this was it wasn't nighttime but there are many many witnesses that saw when this happened he was involved and they are terrified just to know they were taken in police cars so they were not taken on a marked bus or walking they were actually just put into police cars and abducted so there's no rage from the community no rage and you see these people come in and take boys and they just disappear like puff the magic dragon I think there's rage I think there's a lot of rage and there's a lot of organizing and drawing attention to it but I don't know this is the question I was afraid to be asked what is being done and what can be done I think the allowing an independent group of investigators in is a good thing and there's pressure for allowing at the state and federal level human rights commissions to investigate I don't know just in my opinion there's a rage and there's also terror so it's I understand that the question is just you're expecting the people who are perpetrating this injustice to change the injustice that's one option and you know it's not about really expectations and reality it's very hard to understand fear you want to go ahead I'm going to back up this is obviously very complicated and we have to understand a couple of things one thing is the US is funding this and I'll say this right now we've gone from 3 million dollars and framing those kids the bad kids or framing people who are not criminals who justifying these attacks on them because they're criminals we went from the US went from funding the drug drug war 3 million dollars to 2009 to 15 million dollars in 2013 in spite of accelerating human rights abuses right so I mean how do we because we're part I think we're part of the problem and solution right how do we organize around that thank you just time for one more question maybe to answer to answer that I'm the second director and to answer that we take our little organizations put together rallies like that when we see transgender people that murder and we put together rallies just like that here in New York City to get world attention to these two of these things that are one line secondly I haven't heard all night anything about transgender women being murdered last year we had 22 transgender women murdered this year already in the last two months we've had over 5 transgender women murdered in the United States alone in Brazil murdered viciously attacked being attacked by the police and it all has to do not all of it a lot of it has to do with street work and then when you call the police the police don't do anything secondly I have a lawsuit against the NYPD because when I call them a transgender person to my to my building to take care of things they turn around when they find out about trans and walk away and do nothing but to work mm-hmm thank you and you're right I mean that's a great point thank you I'm not going to end this on a tough note because we can't end it and it is tough and I'm delighted that you're all here I'm delighted and I thank you both I think when I began my remarks at the beginning I was talking about the three states that we are facing the state of our nation the state of our world and the state of fear this that has gone on in Mexico is not new the United States has been funding coups has been funding human rights abuses in countries all over the world for decades however we're in a new moment it's come home it's home in a very new way for many of us who may not be people of color or many of us who are Semitic who did not live through the Second World War this has been going on for people of color in this country for centuries it is now suddenly all right for people to have hate to speak of hate and to act on hate it is not all right for us to do nothing and the big question is doing nothing we are complicit and today right now we are complicit and I wonder all the time what can I do it's one of the reasons I wanted to start the Sackler Center it's one of the reasons I invite the people I invite it's one of the reasons that Ajit Prop is out is to remind everybody that we have to stand and we have to speak and I don't know about you but I will admit it at this point and what it will take for us to get over fear and be willing to put our own selves at risk what will it take for us to get there I think we shall see and I hope it will take something and God I hope that we have the courage and if we don't have the courage and if we don't have the balls that we just simply say no this is not right and cannot continue so I want to thank you Andrea because I think you have connected for us not only some horror for 43 children that we don't know where they are but what is going on right here and of course as we know across the globe years ago a program called States of Denial the illegal incarceration of women children and people of color when I started that program people didn't quite understand why I was doing that mass incarceration wasn't on the front pages even though it was in all of our communities and the I think you had a wonderful way of telling it putting it the institution state state sanctioned violence state sanctioned violence is not a phrase that we use in this country and it may be that we have to start thinking about what it means and whether or not it's relevant to us but we do have people who are incarcerated illegally in this country we know that we have two and a half million people incarcerated in any other country in the world we have almost three million children in the United States who have one parent or more in jail we have privatized prisons that are billions of dollars businesses they're huge so I started States of Denial the illegal incarceration of women children and people of color you can go online www.brooklynmuseum.org slash e-a-s-c-f-a slash video and you will see our last 13 programs our next one and the first of our spring series is on March 13th and Brian Stevenson the wonderful author of Just Mercy is going to be here and he will be here speaking with Ray Hinton who is the man that he after many many many years finally freed he had been on death row in Alabama in solitary confinement for nearly two decades I think maybe more so that will be our first program and I'm also very pleased to announce that our Sackler Center first awards this year is June 2nd and it will be going to Angela Davis and and she will be here there will be a movie she will be in discussion with with Gloria Steinem and tickets will begin at $50 and up and they will be going on sale at some point I don't think anything's hit online yet but I'm so pleased to see so much energy and understanding of the issues that we are facing and the horrors that are currently existing and we have to do something so thank you, thank you both and thank you all very much