"Encontrar en el mar" (finding at the sea) was a three-month workshop that, through art and conversation, aimed to encourage a sense of belonging in a group of children living in a Colombian Fishing village called Taganga. I designed the project and led the workshops and the children did all the work.
Part 1: Understanding themselves
To start becoming aware of their lives and identities, we started we self portraits. We studied Frida Kahlo and how you can see her biography in her paintings. Then they created their own self portraits with the task of telling their story through visual arts.
Leonardo's portrait has three mouths because he had been told he spoke too much all the time. He really did.
Most of the portraits depicted water, because most of the kids felt strongly connected to it and spent most of the time in the sea.
Part 2: Re-discovering places and spaces
Taganga is where most of these children spend their lives. I wanted the children to reflect about the space as part of their identity. So we did maps of Taganga that focused on the places that were important to them. We also did a tour around town, having them observe it, and select spots that they deemed worthy of noting and photographing.
A lot of the maps depicted the sea and the mountains as important places. The football court was the epicenter of social life for most. One of the kids added the church "because it protects him from curses."
Part 3: Intervention of their space.
This was planned by the children. I told them we would work on a project together and that they had to plan what to do. They decided they wanted to paint something at the beach as that was the most important place for most of them.
Luckily, the president of the fisherman association allowed us to pain two of the boats that were broken down. This gave weight to the project in the eyes of the children, who took the project very seriously.
One group focused on the sense of familiarity they felt between each other - drawing a huge family tree with their faces on it. The other group focused on the legends about mermaids that are often told in their families.
Luckily, the president of the fisherman association allowed us to pain two of the boats that were broken down. This gave weight to the project in the eyes of the children, who took the project very seriously.
One group focused on the sense of familiarity they felt between each other - drawing a huge family tree with their faces on it. The other group focused on the legends about mermaids that are often told in their families.
