In August, we wrapped up our fourth annual Youth Summer Art Camp. This year we teamed up with the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants (CERI) and the Department of Occupational Therapy at Samuel Merritt University to develop a unique experience for children from refugee and immigrant communities in the East Bay.
Ours is a story of forced migration, ours is a story of multiple worlds. As a child we knew when a relative had died back home – it manifested in my father’s silence, or my mother’s many bodily ailments. We are familiar with distant loss and nearby silent suffering.
In a studio in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, Sen Mendez readies themself, gracefully poised above a piece of linoleum. Carving knife in hand, they will cut images into the linoleum in practice known as block printing. Later Sen will cover these carvings in ink and press them into paper or cloth
What excites ARTogether board member Goli Hashemi about art is how adaptive it can be. Goli leads ARTogether’s Expressive Arts-Based Occupational Therapy Program at Oakland International High School (OIHS). This program provides newcomers and ESL youth a safe space where they can use the various mediums of art art as
*SUBMISSIONS CLOSED* AAPI, Immigrant, Refugee, BIPOC Artists encouraged to apply ARTogether and Local Language invite you to submit to a social justice poster contest. This round’s theme is COMMUNITY. Send us work that celebrates community, it’s strengths, it’s history, it’s faces, spaces and it’s possibilities for a better future. The
