WE DA PEPO
WE DA PEPO is a collaborative project in which eight transnational artists reflect upon immigration and the American experience. We named our project after an anthology of essays on cultural identity by Jose Antonio Burciaga. We honor his work and continue asking the questions he posed related to identity, society and culture. Our discussions began with the question, “What space do I occupy in America?” Mainstream media often answers a question with manufactured labels, propaganda, structures and fragmented histories.
WE DA PEPO emerges from the re-examination of our identities and roles within this rhetoric. WE DA PEPO continues to question societal structures, cultural myths and weaponization institutions that continue marginalizing specific demographics in society. Each artist works their own mediums, selected for their unique culture, social, and historical value, painting, performance, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video, and sound art have learned their unique language to aid the artists in their cultural investigations.
Current WE DA PEPO members are Shiloh Burton, Irene Carvajal-Benavides and Oscar López-Guerrero. Inactive members include: Nivedita Madigubba, Michael Martinez, Jasmine Mengjiao Zhang, Jusun Seo and Vivian Vivas.
WE DA PEPO Members:
Shiloh Burton
Shiloh Burton’s passion, purpose and practice is storytelling and the medium remains secondary. As a social practice artist with photographic origins, they possess 30+ years experience in a variety of visual, audio and digital mediums. They craft contexts to activate audience participation and honor our contradictory, messy and beautiful lived experiences to reflect, relate and redefine our authentic embodied voice, place and space in the world. Personal histories poignantly teach us about ourselves, each other and society. Storytelling in community facilitates dynamic spaces to share narratives of resilience, strategy, love, thriving, justice, healing and transformation. Emerging from their commitment to collaboration, they now focus on facilitating social discourse opportunities through audio and visual portraits. Community members fluctuate between the role of witness, storyteller, creator and co-conspirator. Deeply devoted to holding space for authentic representation to counter master narratives,
Burton created the Identity Intelligence Institute in 2005. They are actively engaged in documenting and distributing stories of transformation, healing and intervention. Coming from a dismantling whiteness, antiracist, Transformative Justice, NVC, PIC: Abolitionist and Education for Liberation background, they know communities possess the solutions and relationships to dismantle systemic oppression and repression together through collaborative commitment and action. They support dynamic spaces for authentic brave heart centered dreaming/change-making/agency.
Oscar Lopez Guerrero
Oscar Lopez Guerrero is a visual artist born and raised in Mexico City, he first came into contact with the art world through the Graffiti urban art scene. After immigrating to the USA to San Francisco, Bay area (Silicon Valley), he focused both artistically and personally on trying to understand his surroundings and his identity in this new land– a Mexican native culturally interrupted by imperialistic forces. He uses a critical eye to engage with the globalization, imperialism, and capitalism that affect every corner of the two nations that share his soul. His concerns are reflected in a dialogue of the Stockholm syndrome symptoms created by the oppression and discrimination of imperialistic orders. On both sides of the border this is having a bigger impact on minorities, people of color and the workers–who through their labor hold together entire nations while suffering from social and cultural amnesia. In order to survive in these societies built on the foundations of white supremacy and colonialism our ancestors have been forced for generations to either hide, directly confront, or sympathize with the oppressors, resulting in a mass amnesia of cultural and social practices. As our cultural identity and practices have been suppressed we have become hostages in our own homeland.
The globalization of classism, racism, and inequality affect the social and psychological side of humanity. Since we so easily forget where we come from as individuals, as an artist he chooses to remember, honor, and reclaim those roots and rights. Multicultural problems affect how we see ourselves in comparison to others, in a disengagement with our history, and in a loss of our customs. Even the color of our skin is a source of contention. These problems are intangible, invisible for many. As an artist, Oscar wants to create tangible images that reflect our psychological symptoms and demand us to confront our submission to the powers that hold us.
Irene Carvajal
Irene Carvajal is a Costa Rican-American mixed media artist and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work examines labor, gender and colonialism and their intersections with politics, globalized economies and identity. Her practice is rooted in print media, materiality and story telling. In particular exploring how technological production tools, materials and processes contribute to the making and meaning of artworks.
Carvajal has exhibited and participated in residencies in the United States, Japan, Mexico, Greece and Costa Rica. Most recently art activations and exhibition venues include an art activation in response the Yolanda Lopez exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art, “What is your sTILE?” An art activation and mural installation at Google Headquarters, Mountain View, CA and the Buttery Fly Effect in Athens, Greece. She has collaborated with Future Farmers and is a founding member of WEDAPEPO. Irene has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford University and UC Berkeley. She currently teaches at San Jose State University.
Carvajal is a 2022 California Art Council Fellow; La Ceiba Grafica Artist Residency (2019, 2020); AEGP Grant recipient, “Taste of Home” (2022); AEGP Grant recipient, “Technologies of Print Symposium”(2021); Stanford University Art Catalyst Grants (2017, 2019, 2020, 2023); SJSU College of the Humanities, Dean’s Professional Development Grant (2018, 2019, 2023); Presenter at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (2017); Root Division Artist Residency (2015-2016); Presenter at the National ACTFL conference Boston, MA (2016); Presenter at the National ACTFL conference Nashville, TN 2017.