Arts for Everyone, Everywhere

press release: Please join UW Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program. The events are free and open to the public.

Presented by Laura Anderson Barbata, Interdisciplinary Arts Outreach Collaborator and LACIS Honorary Fellow

About the presentation: Anderson Barbata will discuss her development as a socially engaged artist and her work with multiple performers and artisan communities across the Americas to present collaborative ¨interventions¨ that combine performance, procession, dance, music, textile arts, masking, spoken word, wearable sculptures and protest. These collaborations across the Americas blend political activism, street theater, textile arts, and arts education while bringing attention to civil, indigenous, and environmental rights issues. Anderson Barbata was an Artist-in-Residence at UW-Madison in the Spring of 2015, as part of the Division of the Arts’ Interdisciplinary Artists in Residence program (IARP). In March of 2023, she will return to help pilot a statewide expansion of that program called “Arts for Everyone, Everywhere.” She will be curating a series of events in Central and Southeastern Wisconsin aimed at bringing artists, activists and teachers from indigenous, immigrant and refugee communities into conversation, and at inspiring future collaboration.

About the presenter: Born in Mexico City, Laura Anderson Barbata is a Mexican transdisciplinary artist currently based in New York and Mexico City. Since 1992 she initiated long-term projects and collaborations in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway, and the United States that address social justice and the environment. Her work often combines performance, procession, dance, music, spoken word, textile arts, costuming, papermaking, zines and protest. Her work is in various private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; el Museo de Arte Moderno, México D.F.; and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Her work has received the Anonymous Was a Woman Award; grants from FONCA Mexico; Mario Trujillo García Defense for Human Rights Award, Mexico; Rockefeller Bellagio Artist in Residence; and Honorary Fellow of Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies LACIS, UW Madison, among others. Laura Anderson Barbata is Honorary Fellow of the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies LACIS Program. University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the College Art Association where she also serves as VP for Diversity and Inclusion.

This program is generously funded by the Ira and Ineva Reilly-Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment, as well as the Division of the Arts at UW-Madison.