11:50am
On September 26, 2014, students from the Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa in the Mexican state of Guerrero boarded buses towards the town of Iguala, where they planned to protest a political event hosted by a political leader and his supporters. As the students arrived in Iguala, local police intercepted the buses. While details of the violent confrontation remain unclear, the police eventually opened fire, killing 6 and wounding 25. Another 43 student were herded into police vehicles and never seen again.
Just eight weeks after the disappearances, internationally renowned artist and activist Francisco Toledo, in conjunction with the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO), received over 700 designs from international artists after launching an open call for artworks addressing the 43 missing students for an exhibition titled Carteles de Ayotzinapa. Forty-three were displayed at the Museo de Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City, along with an installation of 43 kites—each displaying the face of one of the missing students—created by Toledo and participants of an “Art and Paper” workshop in Oaxaca.
This Thursday night, the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) at 685 Venice Blvd., will host an opening reception to present: Ayotzinapa: A Roar of Silence in their Durón Gallery from 5pm-8pm.
SPARC, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), ArtDivision, and Self-Help Graphics & Art , all Los Angeles-based organizations committed to using art for social change, have collaborated to bring this important, international exhibition to the United States for the first time.
The exhibit, Ayotzinapa: A Roar of Silence will travel throughout Los Angeles, beginning tonight at SPARC, later physically transported by 43 University students to Art Division, and finally, Self-Help Graphics & Art as a form of protest in response to this tragedy. As the exhibition travels throughout the city, each organization has added artists creating works around this theme. The community is invited to view, support, and amplify the roar for justice heard from Ayotzinapa and throughout the world.
SPARC is a community-based non-profit arts organization founded in 1976 by Distinguished UCLA professor and artist Judy Baca, filmmaker Donna Deitch, and artist Christina Schlesinger. SPARC is rooted in Art, Community, Education and Social Justice. For more info visit: http://www.SPARCinLA.org
