SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCACY

Laband Art Gallery

Campus-based art galleries and museums are situated on nearly every college and university in the United States. These art venues reflect the profiles of their respective institutions and bring wide-ranging approaches and missions to conversations about art. LMU’s Laband Art Gallery engages LMU’s Jesuit and Marymount values and traditions by presenting thought-provoking exhibitions that are responsive to issues that are actively unfolding.

The Laband is committed to giving voice and visibility to communities who currently struggle to be seen and heard such as LGBTQ, people of color, and femaleidentifying artists. Art has the ability to communicate and evoke emotion in unexpected ways and open up critical discussions about the human condition.

“Confess,” the 2019 solo exhibition by artist Trina McKillen, is an example of a project that opened up challenging conversations. Comprised of multiple installations, “Confess” addressed the subject of the clerical sexual abuse of children and the havoc it has wreaked on individuals and their families. Exhibitionrelated programming was carefully conceived together with various university partners and welcomed community members to join us and explore profound questions raised by the issues of our time.

“I never felt like I had the privilege to be neutral as an artist. … And so I would hope that every single artist — whether or not their work is directly speaking to political problems … is making time and space to be politically engaged, to be reading, to be registered to vote if they can, to inspire other people to vote and to exercise democracy on a daily basis.”

Antonius-Tín Bui,

Artist, Finding Heart (tim tim)

Other socially engaged exhibitions have turned a spotlight on notions of identity. Queer identity was explored in fall 2019’s exhibition “Finding Heart (tìm tim)” by Antonius-Tín Bui. The delicate paper cutting portrait series on display features queer Asian American Pacific Islanders, and his Donrose paper fashion depicts male bodies adorned in majestic-looking, cut-out paper garments that convey a sense of mystery, beauty and fragility. As a queer, gender non-binary, VietnameseAmerican artist, Bui’s work celebrates, honors, and challenges assumptions about intersectional identities.

Site specific installations around LMU’s campus such as Yarnbombing and DreamWavers were curated and promoted by the Laband, and have taken on complex topics such as coral destruction, immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, and bullying.

SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCACY

St. Ignatius Dialogues and Jesuit Cup

The St. Ignatius Dialogues and Jesuit Cup are a public-service-learning and civic debate initiative addressing pressing societal issues such as hunger, homelessness, the for-profit prison system, and the role of education in rehabilitation and reducing recidivism. Participation at the inaugural event required a mandatory service component hosted by the L.A. Mission and Homeboy Industries.

This event was created by the LMU Debate Program in collaboration with the L.A. Mission and Homeboy Industries to provide students from LMU, other Jesuit universities and the member schools of the Civic Debate Conference, with an experiential learning opportunity. It aims to combine social action with collaborative dialogue to improve understanding, produce knowledge, and promote the ability of students to negotiate consensus on difficult policy, economic, and social questions. In its inaugural year, the dialogues began with a day of community service at the L.A. Mission. Students prepared food, cleaned facilities, decorated signs, washed dishes, and helped contribute to the work of the mission. After tours at the L.A. Mission and Homeboy Industries, students had the opportunity to discuss their experience over three rounds of designed discussion and reflection.

The L.A. Mission is a not-for-profit organization which exists to provide help, hope and opportunity to men, women and children in need. Homeboy Industries is a not-for-profit organization which provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women.

“Volunteering at the L.A. Mission, learning about the services they offer, and meeting residents was an eye-opening experience about the growing issue of homelessness in Los Angeles. It was a unique and immersive way to begin the Jesuit Cup, because it allowed us debaters to meet with affected individuals, talk to them directly, and witness the issue up close, rather than simply through research.”

CSJ Center for Reconciliation and Justice

For many years, CFA has partnered with LMU’s CSJ Center for Reconciliation & Justice. The Center, which is run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, offers a forum for dialogue, a place of education and a resource for reflective action. Through a diverse array of offerings, the CSJ Center aims to be a presence for the needs of the LMU community by fully pursuing the university mission to encourage “the service of faith and the promotion of justice” at LMU and beyond.

One such offering is an award named “Hidden Heroes,” where the CSJ Center honors faculty, staff, students and alumni who exemplify justice and reconciliation in their lives. The contribution of each awardee is celebrated through the telling of their story in a dramatic performance given by theatre arts students. Each recipient is also honored through the presentation of an award and a celebration with family, colleagues and friends at a reception.

In addition, LMU’s Department of Theatre Arts offers an oral history class called Voices of Justice, where students explore issues of reconciliation, justice, social action, and collaboration throughout the course of the semester, working closely with the CSJ Center. The course concludes with a fundraiser performance in which students learn about current issues by reenacting scenes based on real-life accounts. Topics covered in the class have included sexism, human trafficking and homelessness, with proceeds going directly to treatment centers.

As part of the class, the students meet extensively with people who are affected by these issues—trafficking victims, homeless individuals, sexual abuse survivors— to inform their final presentations. The experience of this course is intended to be a consciousness-raising one. The goal is to tell stories that wouldn’t necessarily be told otherwise, and it shows students and audience members how they can get involved in solving the world’s problems. The popularity of this course is apparent by the fact that it is cross-listed within six CFA departments that all support and give their students credit for this class.

SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCACY

Mexican Femicides

Since 1993, violent female homicides have escalated in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, even as the state continues to deny that a problem exists. LMU’s Department of Communication Studies faculty members and students are intimately involved with the Luchando hasta Encontrarlas and Ni Una Mas movements, which seek to challenge Mexican rhetoric and bring attention and awareness to the crimes, as well as to the missing girls and women.

Luchando hasta Encontrarlas is a mural project about the missing girls and femicides in Ciudad Juárez y Chihuahua, México, which uses murals as a form of consciousness-raising and education about femicide. To date, the group has produced 14 murals, with the faces of 18 missing and murdered girls. Because of the actions of Luchando hasta Encontrarlas, other families of victims have organized themselves to paint and memorialize their daughters.

Luchando hasta Encontrarlas is part of a growing movement to stop the impunity surrounding femicide, and a living example of the power of art for social change. Faculty members and students from the Department of Communication Studies have traveled to Mexico, raising funds for, and participating in, the creation of some of the murals. Communication Studies has also hosted members of the Mother’s Committee for Juarez to visit campus and speak to students and the LMU community on the issue of femicide, including one of the mothers of a missing girl who was memorialized by the project.

Members of the LMU community joined family members of the murdered and disappeared women while on a trip to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to paint black crosses onto pink backgrounds where the bodies of eight women were found in a river canal along the Juárez-El Paso border as part of Ni Una Mas (Not One More).

Communication Studies is dedicated to shedding light on issues of femicide and gender violence, with courses, speakers, events, and for several years sponsored alternative break trips to Juárez, Mexico, until escalating crime and violence derailed the trips.

Art Therapy in Mexico

The work of LMU’s Department of Marital and Family with Specialization in Art Therapy touches the hearts of children, adults, and families through the art process, supporting wellness throughout the Los Angeles area and beyond. The summer program Art Therapy in Mexico was developed in order to help inform growing clinical skills with social justice and cultural awareness.

This two-week long summer program teams LMU art therapy students with students from the Mexican Institute of Art and Psychotherapy (IMPA). The program concludes with a week-long art therapy workshop that is offered to low income community members participating in a women’s clinic in the San Miguel de Allende region. In recent years, groups have focused on children and adolescent issues, domestic violence processing, loss and grief, and life transitions, to name a few.

The workshop allows participants the opportunity to normalize and support healing with others who have endured similar challenges. Art pieces are discussed in a supportive and confidential setting, and the week culminates in a presentation of group pieces, which are then displayed for the following year, reminding participants of their shared voyage.

Animal Drawing for Animal Rights

Throughout the semester, students enrolled in ART 334: Animal Drawing work with a non-profit animal rights organization of their choosing to create a poster or other item to promote their activism protecting endangered species, wildlife habitat and refuge, and pet adoptions.

On-site drawing of animals takes place both on campus and with field trips to the LA Zoo, Museum of Natural History, Page Museum, and Long Beach Aquarium.

Some recent organizations the students have worked with include Friends for Life Animal Shelter, SOAR: Saving Our Avian Resources, American Bird Conservancy, Paradise Animal Welfare Society, Cheetah Outreach, and ACES: American Crocodile Education Sanctuary.