Art Against Brutality

Join us for a conversation on Art Against Brutality, which explores how murals process shared historical memory in the aftermath of political violence.

Drawing from the fields of community arts and social practice art, Art Against Brutality explores the effects of participatory arts projects on communities affected by state terror in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina, México, and the United States. Bernardi and political writer Mark Danner will discuss how collaborative arts projects, involving children, youth, and adults, forge common threads of intention and allow for collective processing of historical memory. Bernardi will present these works as evidence that community-based artistic expression can arise from collective intention and serve as a vehicle to retain memory and dignity as well as aiding the relentless demand towards obtaining social and human rights for communities affected by political violence.

Claudia Bernardi is an installation artist, painter, and printmaker whose artwork is impacted by war and post war periods. Born in Argentina, Bernardi was affected by the military junta (1976-1983) that caused 30,000 desaparecidos (disappeared). In 2005, Bernardi founded Walls of Hope in a war zone in El Salvador, a community-based art, education, and human rights project that has been replicated in many countries around the world. Bernardi designs and facilitates collaborative art projects with survivors of political violence, survivors of torture, survivors of sexual violence, and with communities forced into exile. Bernardi is emerita professor at the California College of the Arts.

Mark Danner has written about foreign affairs and American politics for more than two decades, covering Latin America, Haiti, the Balkans and the Middle East among other stories. He was for many years a staff writer at The New Yorker and contributes frequently to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine and other publications. He teaches at the University of California and at Bard College and speaks and debates widely about America’s role in the world.