Documenting Resilience
(AHR I & II)

 Documenting Resilience in Tucson’s Southside is a co-creative visual and spatial engagement program created out of a partnership between Sunnyside Foundation, a leader in advocacy for Tucson’s Southside, and the University of Arizona project team.
Founded in 1975, El Pueblo Center is a hub for recreational and public services, neighborly exchange and community placekeeping in Tucson’s Southside. Wrapped in murals and memory and traversed by families and public servants, the center, located at the intersection of Irvington Road & South Sixth Avenue, is now the focus of efforts by numerous stakeholders in the city and private sector for revitalization and reinvestment. With the generous support of the Arts|Humanities|Resilience grant, the team established residencies for local artists to work with community advisors, archivists, and scholars to document, explore, and manifest a “living” archive of El Pueblo Center and the communities that surround it. 

Blending engaged visual and spatial research and contemporary image-making, the project fuses public archival efforts with university resources to translate privately held memories and experiences into a collective narrative of place. Its process, products and iterative display in celebrations, viewing sessions and salons across sites highlight the arts and humanities dimensions of Southside resilience. Taken together, they show what a future “living” archival infrastructure for Southside communities might support—the means for community members to continue adding their own multimedia histories and stories made at and with the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center and Sunnyside Foundation. An ongoing project, the Arts|Humanities|Resilience grant funded activities between April 2023 to Summer 2024.

Principal Investigators: Selina Barajas (Sunnyside Foundation), Jacqueline Barrios (College of Humanities), Meg Jackson Fox (Center for Creative Photography), Elizabeth “Liz” Soltero (Sunnyside Foundation), Kenny H. Wong (College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture)






SS22.STSTORIES SOUTH OF 22ND INFO
FEEDALL GALLERY
CATEGORIES
El Pueblito Zine
Arts & Culture
  Research
  Publication
  Documenting Resilience
  
Jacqueline Barrios and Kenny H. Wong (editors) with Raúl “Netza” Aguirre-Garcia, Selina Barajas, Bob Diaz, Meg Jackson Fox, Luis Fernando Gonzalez, Anna Sanchez, and Jessica Wolff (contributors) 
The El Pueblito zine documents a collective journey learning from and with the storytellers of El Pueblo Center and the Southside. You are holding its first issue, created, printed and disseminated at the El Pueblito Salon in the Fall of 2023, the latest gathering in a series of initiatives and engagements emerging from Sunnyside Foundation, a leader of advocacy for Tucson’s Southside, in collaboration with University of Arizona scholars and educators, aimed at place-keeping at El Pueblo, as the heart of the area’s histories, legacies, and ongoing investment.






Resiliencia
Arts & Culture  Research
  Video
  Documenting Resilience
  
Luis Fernando Gonzalez
Resiliencia, 2023, digital video, 5:45

Artist’s Statement:

The film is called Resiliencia because of the emotional ability El Pueblo gives to those who lend themselves to it. From mental health support to nurturing racial pride, and everything in between, the center’s “resiliencia” helps its users cope with what they are going through. Giving those in need social support and positive affirmation influences a person to become more resilient. When I started this journey this past spring of documenting the resilience of El Pueblo, I felt like I was returning back to my childhood era. Visiting the recreational center with my daughter or heading to StoryTime at the Frank De La Cruz Library reignited the past I had spent at the center. Being able to feel the center's spirit not only by myself but with my daughter inspired me to discover more and awakened my curiosity. It led me to key community leaders and seniors who cared for this space in the past and today. Their vision and words gave me a sense of acceptance and pride in living and growing up on the Southside of Tucson. The center’s resources not only helped me become a better father, it taught me what it meant to be one—to do what you can to improve the generation that will come after you. This film incorporates media collected from the following sources: Sunnyside Foundation Community Reinvestment Days and PAH 200 El Pueblo Site Visits held in the Spring 2023; interviews conducted with Richard Ortiz Barker, former Director of the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center; Ruben Reyes, District Director for Congressman Raúl Grijalva; and Liz Soltero, CEO of Sunnyside Foundation. Footage also derives from the archive of Raúl “Netza” Aguirre, Ward 1 Día de la Niñez, StoryTime at Frank de la Cruz-El Pueblo Library, and Sunnyside Foundation Gives Day.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Francis Montano Canez and Mary Lou Montijo Granillo who showed me the true resilience of the center through their deep and personal emotional connections with the place. I also wish to thank my family: my daughter Khloe Aleali Gonzalez, my partner Leah Vega and my father Luis Mario Gonzalez for bringing me to the center many years ago.

Many thanks to the staff at El Pueblo, the seniors who I met, and a special thank you to the viewers for taking time to enjoy El Pueblo with us!



Viva El Pueblo
Arts & Culture
  Research
  Multimedia
  Documenting Resilience
  
Jessica Wolff

Viva El Pueblo, 2023, 9 images, archival inkjet print, various sizes, accompanying soundtrack. 

Artist’s Statement:

When describing the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, Congressman Raúl Grijaliva once said, “there’s a presence there.” In the nine-image series project, Viva El Pueblo, I give that presence a face. By taking inspiration from the Chicano and post Chicano art movements—specifically from artist David Tineo—I create images that mix history and symbolism together. In doing so, I am able to tell the story of El Pueblo while also looking into its future. 

Each image in this project was developed from oral and written histories of El Pueblo combined with visual inspiration from the artworks and murals of David Tineo, and in its premiere installation at El Pueblo, it was accompanied by a curated playlist of audio materials. One specific mural Gentes Unidas Nuestra Raza (1979) that Tineo worked on with Danny Garza, which graces the northside of the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, features a figure with outstretched arms. I interpret this mural as a welcome sign to the community. In the featured image for the zine, Like Monarchs, I use a similar pose along with monarch butterflies to represent people being drawn to and welcomed into the space that is El Pueblo. My photograph Like Monarchs welcomes you to view the other images in the project Viva El Pueblo and explore the history and personality of the center. Three of the nine, including Like Monarchs are featured in this exhibition, while the rest are printed in the inaugural zine of El Pueblito. A process image for the project was created and can be viewed in the “process” section of the exhibition, providing transcribed quotes from community storytellers, a QR code to listen to them, and source imagery referenced by each image. 

An invaluable source of inspiration for my project is the work of David Tineo. Using Tineo’s art and murals as a study in Chicano and post-Chicano art, I found a particular interest in his work due to the dominant presence of his mural Gentes Unidas–Nuestra Raza (1979), which he produced in collaboration with Danny Garza, at the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center. This led me to explore and study many of his murals around Tucson and his artwork featured in the Tucson Museum of Art exhibition catalog Viva David Tineo!: A Retrospective of Tucson’s Muralist and Art Educator (2010). 

Special thanks to my family, including Jasmin Wolff, Alex Arias, Emilio Arias, Mia Portela, Octavio Peru, Cheyanne Martinez, Mina Wolff, and Tony Wolff, who posed for my images and helped me behind the scenes of each photograph. Finally, I would like to acknowledge leaders and community members, Congressman Raúl Grijalva, Raúl E. Aguirre, Richard Barker, Nancy Johnson, Anna Sanchez, and Becki Quintero, whose words about El Pueblo and its community are at the center of my project.


Like Monarchs, 2023, archival inkjet print, 13” X 19.5”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project
An Attitude, 2023, archival inkjet print, 10” X 15”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project
A Sense of Pride, 2023, archival inkjet print, 10” X 15”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project
Viva El Pueblo, 2023, archival inkjet print, 20” X 30”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project
Roots, 2023, archival inkjet print, 13” X 19.5”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project
The Spirit of El Pueblo, 2023, archival inkjet print, 13” X 19.5”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project
The Heart of the Neighborhood, 2023, archival inkjet print, 12” X 12”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project
Mixed, 2023, archival inkjet print, 12” X 12”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project
We are Here, 2023, archival inkjet print, 12” X 12”, from the Viva El Pueblo Project


VIEW THE FULL PROJECT HERE