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
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