Winter Bible Institute 2020 - Dr. Yohana Agra Junker, February 16

"Art at the Border: Delineating an Aesthetic of Combat and Communal Resistance" Dr. Yohana Agra Junker, Faculty Associate in Theology, Spirituality, and Arts, Pacific School of Religion Visual arts in the Americas, from the latter half of the twentieth century to the present, have been powerful tools in revealing to us the wounds of history. Art created at the US-Mexico border has engaged with these wounds while delineating an aesthetic of combat and communal resistance. Although multi-vocal and extraordinarily diverse, these artists have continued to denounce the configurations of asymmetrical power relations, the abrasions of colonial histories, the (i)logic of neoliberalism, and the systemic ways in which people on the move have been excluded and “de-realized” of their humanity. While commodities are free to cross borders, certain bodies are not. In this week’s conversation, we will examine JR’s picnic table, Rael’s Teeter Totter, Fernandez’sBorrando la Frontera, Jaar’s The Cloud, and Post-Commodity’s Valla Repelente. These works of art reach bi-directionally across the border functioning as locus theologicus—a place for doing theology artistically and prophetically. Taken together, they become genuine sources of human expression at the intersections while also unmasking the struggles of disenfranchised peoples. They also provide models for loving nos/otros radically.