Picturing the Border Series: Michelle Angela Ortiz and Dr. Veronica Montes

Michelle Angela Ortiz is an award-winning visual artist, skilled muralist, community arts educator, and filmmaker who uses her art as a vehicle to represent people and communities whose histories are often lost or co-opted. Through community arts practices, painting, documentaries, and public art installations, she creates a safe space for dialogue around some of the most profound issues communities and individuals may face. Her work tells stories using richly crafted and emotive imagery to claim and transform spaces into a visual affirmation that reveals the strength and spirit of the community.

Ortiz has worked with Dr. Veronica Montes, Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of Latin American, Iberian, and Latina/o Studies at Bryn Mawr College. For this event the two will speak about their interdisciplinary collaborations and the ways that art can be a tool for activism and the study of migration.

The event will be held at Taller Puertorriqueño, 2600 N. 5th St. Philadelphia, PA 19133. Free visitor parking is available in the rear of the building on Huntingdon St.

Please register using the link below. This event is free and open to the public. Please consider adding a donation to your ticket price to support more free events like this at the Berman Museum of Art.

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For 25 years, Michelle Angela Ortiz has designed and Created over 50 large-scale public works nationally and internationally. Since 2008, Ortiz has led art for social change projects in Costa Rica and Ecuador and as a cultural envoy through the United States Embassy in Fiji, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, Honduras and Cuba.

Dr. Veronica Montes

Dr. Veronica Montes is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies at Bryn Mawr College, where she has taught since 2015. Her areas of focus include immigration/migration, Latino communities in the U.S., gender, globalization, qualitative research methods, and the political economy.

With this series we aim to amplify the contemporary work of local artists, activists and scholars who, like Enrique Bostelmann, focused their attention on the U.S.-Mexico border. “Picturing the Border” seeks to address the many ways that individuals represent, imagine, and conceptualize the border beyond its status as a geographic location or a political division. Our speakers come from a variety of professions and backgrounds from which they will speak about the border and its place within their work, while also providing an opportunity to evaluate the work of Enrique Bostelmann (on display in the Berman Museum’s Main Galleries) and recognize the resonances and distinctions between his decades long career and that of local Latinx/é artists.

Host or Publisher Philip & Muriel Berman Museum of Art