ABOUT THE RESIDENCY

Vazquez regularly works in her neighborhood as an interpreter and she does that work under the Language Justice philosophy. If applied to a library, Language Justice would sound like “the right that we all have to read in the language in which we feel most comfortable”. Under this logic her Mayan neighbors would have access to Mayan literature at the local library. But the reality is that they find it difficult to get to the library, regardless of whether there are materials in their mother language or not. What does it look like to take the library to her neighbors and for them to literally “see” the language they speak? She is envisioning language learning/appreciation/survival manifested in a text based installation that may live at the Working Library and somewhere in her neighborhood. During her time in residence Vazquez will explore the process of language learning, as well as the idea of a travelling Mayan library.

ABOUT PATRICIA VAZQUEZ

Patricia Vazquez lives and works between Portland and Mexico City. Her practice includes a range of media, from painting and murals to video and socially engaged art projects, and it is deeply informed by her experiences working as organizer and educator in the immigrant rights and other social justice movements, both in content and in the methodologies she uses. Her work has been shown at the Portland Art Museum, the Reece Museum, the Autzen Gallery at Portland State University, and the Houston Art League; but also in other spaces as apartments complexes, community based organizations and schools. She is the recipient of the 2013 Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize and has received grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC), the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), Portland’s Jade and Midway Districts and the Oregon Community Foundation.

More about her work can be found at www.cargocollective.com/patriciavg.