cameras, mosaics, agency

cameras
Most of you already know that, as of two weeks ago, there are no longer any cameras. However, thanks to the generosity of a good friend in the States, more cameras are on their way, and we can only pray that they get here quickly. With two months left to my internship, and an exhibition planned for mid-November, there is not really much time left but certainly a lot more to be done. In the mean time, I am finding other ways for us to move forward. We just picked out the theme of our exhibition - "nature, art, & the city" - which one of the girls captured pretty brilliantly I think in the photo below (a personal favorite).

el árbol encarcelado - the imprisoned tree

mosaics [i.e. what-has-been-happening-lately]
I won't lie and say that this hasn't been a challenging time since the disappearance of the cameras. But in the midst of it, I am grateful that there have been plenty of other things going on. Just this week, the girls and I finished our mosaic project [pictured below], after almost a month of collecting, breaking, and gluing glass shards to a piece of wood. This was quite a lesson for me in the challenges of community art, when all I wanted to do as the teacher was control the process, which is the exact opposite of what I should have been doing. Meanwhile in the office, I have been renovating Mosoj Yan's social media, working on the Albergue jewelry-selling business, and gathering data on how the girls fare after they leave Albergue - with the hopes of putting together a proposal for improving the seguimiento (follow-up) program. For my independent study, about once a week I get to sit in on the girls' art class at school, and very sporadically I get to meet up and interview artistas cochabambinos.  Both of these things have given me some great insight into the relationship between creativity, education, class, and culture and I can certainly say I've been enjoying the learning process.

agency

I also recently got to write an article for Wheaton's newspaper, the Record, which was a good opportunity for me to think through on a personal level why art matters in development, and in particular why art matters in the context of Albergue. Here's a little excerpt from it:

Similar to other forms of injustice and oppression, abuse has the power to affect a person’s agency—on one level by taking away a person’s ability to act, but on another by causing the mind to believe that it does not have agency. The young women I work with have experienced both of these. To one degree their experiences have indeed limited their agency, but to another—perhaps because they have internalized the expectation that they are limited—their experiences have made them believe they are powerless. And this is where art comes in. Art can act as an agent of self-expression, healing, and empowerment, because giving someone the opportunity to create tells them they are worthy of creating. And more specifically, giving someone a camera tells her, “You have the ability to capture and create something beautiful."

prayer
-For the cameras to get here quickly
-For all the details for the exhibition to come together over the next month (also, praise that I have already found a space to do it in!)
-For God to give me the strength & grace to invest, love, and finish well