La Misma Canción: An artist talk
by Mark Menjívar
When: April 10, 2024
Time: 6:00 pm
Where: Reid Ballroom at Whitman College
This event is free and open to the public!
*Live English to Spanish interpretation will be provided.
*Free bilingual childcare is available with advanced registration. RSVP with children’s ages and language to tlpwallawalla@gmail.com
Join us to welcome visual artist Mark Menjívar who will present his current public, participatory artwork focused on the migration of peoples and birds across borders. Menjívar’s multidisciplinary work, La Misma Canción (The Same Song), emphasizes how the world of birds can help us engage the complexities of place, borders, and movement. His talk will examine migratory birds' resilience and determination in their perilous journey and the fortitude of peoples who have moved across borders to create better lives for themselves and their families.
La Misma Canción will launch in early April during a Bird Welcoming Festival at Prescott School District, a rural PreK-12 public school 30 minutes north of Walla Walla. This project was commissioned through Carnegie Picture Lab as part of local artists Amanda Evans and Tia Kramer’s multi-year engagement with Prescott School District titled When The River Becomes A Cloud / Cuando el río se transforma en nube. Evans, Kramer, and Menjívar have been meeting weekly with Prescott students since February to co-author drawings that celebrate birds that migrate between Central America and Eastern Washington.
This project brings together local community partners including Whitman College and The Northwestern Archives, WEB-Whitman Events Board, Walla Walla Immigrant Rights Coalition, Carnegie Picture Lab, Prescott School District, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Audubon Society.
Accessibility / Interpretation / Childcare
Spanish Interpretation provided. ASL Interpretation is available with advanced request to tlpwallawalla@gmail.com
Child care is also available with advance registration. RSVP with children’s ages and language to tlpwallawalla@gmail.com
More about the artist: Mark Menjívar is a San Antonio-based artist and Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. His art practice primarily consists of creating participatory projects while being rooted in photography, oral history, archives, and social action. He attended McLennan Community College, holds a BA in Social Work from Baylor University and an MFA in Social Practice from Portland State University. Menjívar is the artist-in-residence with the Texas After Violence Project, a public memory archive that fosters deeper understandings of the impacts of state violence. He is also a member of Borderland Collective, which utilizes collaborations between artists, educators, youth, and community members to engage complex issues and build space for diverse perspectives, meaningful dialogue, and modes of creation around border issues.
Drawings of migrating birds created by Prescott School students from 4th grade, 8th grade, and the High School Art Class. 2024