California Story Fund
Geographies of the Imagination
California College of the Arts
Oakland
Project Director: Sonia Manjon
Immigrants who arrive in California bring with them not only their traditions but also images of past landscapes and mental maps of how they moved about in their old locales. In their new environments, they create new mental maps overlaying the old ones.
This project aims to reveal these intersecting maps by creating a multimedia installation of personal stories of migration by Chilean immigrants to the San Francisco Bay Area and maps of their journeys.
Anthropologist and artist Lydia Nakashima Degarrod will create the maps and collect the stories and create an installation of video and audio recordings, photographs and maps.
“Chileans in the Bay Area represent some of the earliest immigrants to this community and are a sizable community,” Degarrod said.
Two types of maps will be shown: those representing participants’ memories of the Chilean landscape and others that reflect their journey to the Bay Area and how they now move about now.
A lecture series and panel discussion will enable the broader public to learn about and interact with the project.
The program is part of the Visiting Artist/Scholar Program at the California College of the Arts’ Center for Art and Public Life. The center provides the resources necessary for diverse artists and scholars to come together to create new work and is committed to sharing this work with a wider audience through exhibitions, lectures and on its website.
“Our main goal is to honor the participants’ memories and the way images from their homeland are part of their everyday experiences in the Bay Area,” Degarrod said.