Citizen of the Week: Michelle Angela Ortiz
Apr. 25, 2019
Some might say using undocumented immigrants to install a 90-foot painting in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement edifice—as Ice agents look downward from their part windows—is highly provocative. Some might even say reckless. But, this piece of art-as-activism laid out in in vivid xanthous letters, certainly got attention. And that'southward the point.
Not only does artist and community arts educator Michelle Angela Ortiz, forty, want to get the attending of government officials and policy makers with her art, she knows she has to reach the public. Educated voters tin can hold their representatives accountable, and public outrage has a style of forcing politicians to take stock of an event they may have previously avoided.
"I feel that if my art tin can assistance other people think differently and connect to each other to be reminded of our humanity, and then information technology is serving a proficient purpose," says Ortiz.
Despite having a police presence and a letter of the alphabet from the Streets Department commissioner assuring Ortiz that the immigrant families who helped in the cosmos of the mural outside of the ICE building would be safety, she remained vigilant: "The art piece of work [part of her ongoing "Familias Separadas" project] is important, but information technology's non always the priority. To be successful in this situation, we had to guarantee the safety of the customs in the presence of a building that represents so much fear and for them to get fearless."
Ortiz wants Americans—regardless of where they land in the clearing debate—to remember that the families who are fleeing United mexican states and Central American are humans, and as such, worthy of pity. The message on the street in front of the ICE edifice, painted in big block messages, is a quote from Ana, an undocumented mother who was detained at a Berks Canton family prison house, and information technology reads: "WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS, RISKING OUR LIVES, FOR OUR FAMILIES & OUR FUTURES."
That bulletin, painted dorsum in October 2022 on the 1600 block of Callowhilll Street, was i of five community murals Ortiz installed around the city for "Familias Separadas." (Juntos was her community partner and it was a part of Mural Arts Philadelphia'due south dynamic citywide public fine art project, "Open Source.")
As a regular Cultural Envoy for the United States Embassy, Ortiz is no stranger to hierarchy and got all necessary permits and permission from outgoing Mayor Michael Nutter and the Streets Department commissioner to install each ane of her works, despite their potential to stir controversy.
The Streets commissioner asked her if the mural at the Ice edifice might offend people. Ortiz turned his question around. "I said, 'What if we put this up and everyone who is undocumented who contributes to the livelihood of this urban center feels represented and empowered?'" she recalls."I experience that if my art tin can aid other people call back differently and connect to each other to be reminded of our humanity, and so it is serving a skilful purpose."
We meet on a morning at Function Coffee Labs, shut to her house near the Italian Market. Ortiz grew up in this neighborhood and attended Moore Higher of Art & Blueprint then Rosemont College for her graduate work. She is an engaging, voluble creative person with a radiant smile and an intensity of purpose suited to the forcefulness of her convictions. Through her murals and workshops, she's helped communities around the world tell their stories (including large-calibration works in Costa Rica, Republic of ecuador, Fiji, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, Honduras, and Cuba).
Ortiz's female parent, who immigrated from Colombia at 17, worked for decades in the Italian Market for the Giordano family unit at 10th and Washington. Her father, who moved from Puerto Rico as a young man, did maintenance work for a Eye City office building. They were the second Puerto Rican family unit to move onto their block. That gives the current immigrant situation an immediacy for Ortiz, a sensitivity to those trying to create a new life in the United States.
Despite all the fancy third-moving ridge coffee options at Role Coffee, Ortiz orders a cup of tea with honey and launches into an near 2-hour blitz of information nearly the transformative power of her murals and workshops on the communities she engages, the blend of promise and practicality her art requires, and the unfairness of how she thinks immigrant families are being treated.
Ortiz wants Americans—regardless of where they country in the immigration argue— to retrieve that the families who are fleeing United mexican states and Central American are humans, and as such, worthy of our compassion.
At one point, a woman drinking coffee nearby in the quiet java shop gives Ortiz a big grin from across the room and tells her how wonderful the work is that Ortiz has been describing. The artist'due south passion for justice is infectious like that.
Capturing customs tensions, identity and aspirations has been a thread in her piece of work throughout Ortiz's career. And in that location was more creative material to exist mined beyond the geographical borders of Ortiz's "Familias Separadas" Philly-based works. It led to the artist receiving a prestigious 2022 Artist as Activist ii-year Fellowship from the Rauschenberg Foundation, assuasive her to focus on the family trauma born out of the detention of undocumented mothers and children. Ortiz also landed a coveted Pew Fellowship terminal spring.
The second phase of "Familias Separadas," which was unveiled in Harrisburg last October, had a specific target in mind: our country'due south own family prison, Berks County Residential Center. The Pennsylvania facility is ane of only three family prisons in the The states; the other two are in Texas. The Berks County middle has been in operation since 2001 and is currently funded by a federal contract from ICE worth near $1.3 one thousand thousand a year, according to a 2022 story in The Reading Eagle.
About an hour abroad from Philadelphia, in Leesport, Berks is controversial . The government says it is needed to detain immigrant families while the authorities considers their cases, and for those who desire to stem the tide of undocumented immigration, Berks might seem a office of a bureaucratic procedure, along with ICE and border control. Every bit of this calendar month, though, Berks is mostly empty , even as President Trump has said there is no more room for people seeking asylum.
But it still remains open, with a scattering of families, and a process that is perplexingly unclear: some immigrant families are paroled into the care of family unit members and sponsors, while other families are put in detention. Who gets what treatment is a mystery that reflects the larger story of asylum-seekers at our borders and beyond.
To Ortiz, the issue goes across the legal fight, to one of fairness and compassion. Her grant from the Rauschenberg Foundation specifically tasks her with examining the trauma of the undocumented children and parents who are incarcerated in the Berks facility and to tell their stories through video and fine art installations. "Detention overall, whether information technology's a twenty-four hour period or ii years, is still traumatic and dehumanizing. That's important to communicate," says Ortiz.
In March 2017, Ortiz began interviewing four mothers—Delmy, Lorena, Sofia, and Karen—who, along with their children, were held at Berks for almost two years before existence released. Concluding fall, she painted an 88-human foot-long prototype of their optics onto the country capitol steps. It was one of 8 large-scale works in Harrisburg unveiled before the mid-term election to stir public opinion and incite political action.
"Her approach to the outcome wasn't well-nigh lawyers or organizers yelling at politicians," says David Bennion, a Philadelphia attorney who founded the Free Migration Project in 2016, which represents immigrant clients. "It is a new angle that is bringing the result to a new audience. Her fine art provides a very humanizing perspective. It takes you lot out of the framework of clearing policy to see people every bit other human beings. That'south very valuable. She puts a face on the issue—literally."
Ortiz and the Coalition to Shut Downwardly Berks, a nonprofit advocacy group, hoped the murals would amplify the public outcry to spur Governor Tom Wolf to shut downward the Berks facility with an emergency release order while it operates without a license, something he promised during his reelection campaign. Instead, they suggest he authorize the facility as a much-needed opioid handling facility.
"The art makes people feel empathy, sadness, and anger," says the creative person. "But I desire to move them towards activity. People recall this is just either a Latino issue or a migration result. Simply it'south on a larger spectrum. It's a mass incarceration issue, it's a homo rights result, it's a kid welfare issue. My work is trying to widen the lens of why many people should be involved instead of just a specific community."
Ortiz, along with motion-picture show editor and cultural organizer Laura Deutch, are releasing a short documentary, Las Madres de Berks , about "Familias Separadas" that airs for the outset time this weekend in Reading. It volition be screened in Philadelphia on May ninth and June tertiary.
I enquire Ortiz a final question about the detained women she interviewed. After all of the time in detention at Berks (the longest stint being 663 days) under those traumatic conditions, was the escape into the United States worth it?
"I of the moms who fled El Salvador had a teenage son," responds Ortiz. "Earlier they left nearly of his friends were killed by gangs, so it was a looming fear that something would happen to her child. 1 of the phrases that the son said in his interview with me is 'We left to save my life.' It'southward actually nigh that."
Photo by Neal Santos 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/citizen-of-the-week-michelle-angela-ortiz/
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