Artist’s work a visual voice for change
Favianna Rodriguez looks to empower people in marginalized communities
At 16, Favianna Rodriguez helped lead a student walkout at San Leandro High School. She and her fellow students marched to the BART station where they demanded that the ticket agents let them enter because they had “youth power.”
The gates opened and the students hopped the train to Concord. They demonstrated outside the police department jail, chanting “schools not jails.”
“We felt like here we are this bunch of Latino kids wanting to protest against incarceration and criminalization,” said Rodriguez, now 38, a daughter of Peruvian immigrants who lives in Fruitvale in East Oakland. “We said let’s go to a white neighborhood and protest.”
Today, Rodriguez is an internationally known artist and community organizer. Her bold posters and digital artwork fea-
turing people of color focus on race, immigration, globalization, gender equality and environmental justice.
Rodriguez, who identifies as queer, has had her work exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and around the country. She’s given hundreds of lectures at schools, colleges and community venues about the power of art to create new narratives that empower people in marginalized communities.
“A cultural strategy is different from a political strategy because we are speaking to the heart space and challenging the unconscious bias that caused people to vote in this very hateful way and created the environment for what we are witnessing now,” Rodriguez said. “Donald Trump was a very good storyteller about the world he wanted to see and appealed to people’s emotions. We need to do the same.”
Rodriguez’s work will be on exhibit through April 26 at California Humanities at Swan’s Market in Oakland.
“They are beautiful pieces of work, but they also have a really strong position,” said Neha Balram, community engagement coordinator at California Humanities. “She tells and shares a story that others are inspired by that encourages them to get civically engaged and active in their communities.”
Rodriguez grew up in Fruitvale. When she was 8, her mother enrolled her in art lessons where she began learning printmaking — the political, reproducible art of the Chicano and Black Panther movements.
Rodriguez’s father was a dental technician and did janitorial work. Her mother operated a travel agency and ran a bilingual phone service for medical clinics. They had dreams of their daughter becoming a doctor or engineer.
But Rodriguez was drawn to the community activists protesting the conditions in her East Oakland neighborhood. The crack epidemic had cut a wide swath, spurring Oakland’s reputation as a homicide capital.
Rodriguez pleaded with her parents to let her go to Mexico City for a year to live with an uncle. It was there that she discovered the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and Che Guevara, a key figure in the Cuban revolution.
After eighth grade, Rodriguez returned home and got involved in student organizing. Neighborhood murals of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, Chicano civil rights activists and labor leaders, further inspired her activism.
In 1994, California passed Prop 187. The ballot measure blocked undocumented residents from using nonemergency health care, public education and other services. It was a defining moment for Rodriguez.
“When you looked at what (Gov.) Pete Wilson and all those people were saying, they were talking about brown people being criminals and it was directed at Latinos,” Rodriguez said. “That was the first time I felt so much hatred and injustice.”
After high school, Rodriguez went to UC Berkeley. She later dropped out to pursue her art and activism.
Van Jones, founder of Green for All, an organization that tackles inequality and climate change, met Rodriguez when she was involved in a student hunger strike over the university’s handling of the ethnic studies program.
“Favianna’s always had this very strong voice, these powerful leadership skills, and this real passion for change and justice with this courage that is absolutely palpable,” said Jones, now a CNN commentator.
Jones said Rodriguez is one of the few visible people of color in the climate change movement.
“She’s a bridge builder getting communities of color to take environmental and climate change issues seriously,” he said.
At 21, Rodriguez had an abortion, another defining moment. That experience would later inspire radical pieces such as her “Slut Power Series.” The posters feature women of color and blunt messages, such as “Politicians off my Poontang, my Uterus is mine.”
In addition to her own art and community organizing, Rodriguez has been a mentor to others. She’s the founder and cultural strategist for CultureStrike, a national art and activist organization. She also cofounded the EastSide Arts Alliance in Oakland, which provides performance and studio space for artists.
Julio Salgado, a 33-yearold visual artist, met Rodriguez in Los Angeles when his work was featured in a show she organized. She convinced him to move to the Bay Area. Salgado said she let him stay in her home for a month and took him under her wing.
“Favianna was really one of the first people I met who was about giving artists resources,” said Salgado, who identifies as queer and whose work puts a human face on undocumented people and gays. “She has really pushed for seeing to it that artists are compensated for their work.”
After juggling so many balls, Rodriguez now plans to scale back on other commitments and devote more time to making art.
“Now, I want to focus on more pleasure-based works,” she said. “In our movements, we are always talking about the bad news and rarely talk about the things that bring us joy and how we imagine our futures.”