Episode 153: Leslie C. Sotomayor and “Feminist Connect” Exhibition

In celebration of Women’s History Month, I invite you to experience the exhibition “Feminist Connect,” at the Charles Art Project in Lubbock, Texas. (March 4-30, 2022).
.
And yes, I dedicated two episodes to this exhibition, but also to the co-curators, Sally Brown (Episode #151) and in this episode multi-media artist Leslie C. Sotomayor. 🙂

Links: Feminist Connect Exhibition
Follow Leslie C. Sotomayor: @art_by_lcs on IG– Website: Academic Pursuits

Featured Image: “Stretchmarks” and “Crossings”–credit to artist Leslie C. Sotomayor

Script:

Episode 153: Hello my Art Enthusiasts

In the United States March is Women’s History Month. My heart bursts for the many opportunities, the daily events and activities communities all over the country are doing to commemorate, observe and encourages us to celebrate women and their vital role in American history. As an educator in the visual arts, I would be remiss if I did not pay special attention in bringing awareness and celebrating the impact of women in the story of art, here in the United States and abroad. It is the purpose of this podcast series.  Cheers to Women!

I invite you as part of your Women’s History Month festivities to explore and engage with contemporary women artists and makers in the exhibition “Feminist Connect” open until March 30 at the Charles Adam Studio Project in Lubbock, Texas. You can experience it at the exhibition space or virtually online. It features 14 national women artists.

The co-curators for this show, Sally Brown and Leslie C. Sotomayor, both visual artists “sought out artworks that firmly substantiated a feminist connection of lived experiences, feminist lineage and larger social issues.” Their active role as curators engaged them in a more intiate conversation through the art, with individual stories by the artists—as the viewer we experience the female experience and narrative in works of art—“a collective visual language that centers on co-creating knowledge.”  It is an interesting relationship between the curators and the artists.

Sally Brown and Leslie C. Sotomayor have been guests on my show. In Episode 151, I published my conversation with Sally Brown and in a moment, you are invited to join me in a previous episode, # 107, with the artist and scholar Leslie C. Sotomayor.

Leslie is a multi-media artist who expresses visual narratives of her own story as a Latin American woman. Her research work includes her role as educator and curator alongside an artistic practice of making works. She writes, “My emphasis is about my own lived experiences within the U.S. as a Latina and my travel to Cuba. I engage with concepts of hybrid identities, psychological and emotional traveling, and post-immigrant generations.” Sotomayor articulates the struggles and challenges of other Latin American women artists. She represents an unique commonality–“lived experiences as a Latina woman and all the fluid and multiple things that my identity means.” Her identity–their identity. The show includes a journey through her 2015  site-specific installation, “Reconciling the Waters—you will experience through the multi-media work living within borders as Sotomayor describes, “bridging through bodies of waters of my ancestors migration from the Mediterranean to Cuba and to the United States.”

In the podcast notes are links to the Feminist Connect show, and Leslie C. Sotomayor IG profiles and their websites. Thank you for listening and I know you will enjoy the exhibition’s evocative work by contemporary female artists. Thank you again!