Frank Islam Athenaeum Symposia Speaker Series

Amplifying Community Voices: Public Art and Social Change, Michelle Angela Ortiz

Michelle Angela Ortiz's presentation will focus on the power of transforming public spaces with imagery and messages that reflect the power of community stories. She will speak on her work as an artist engaging different communities for 20 years in the United States and abroad.

Biography

Michelle Angela Ortiz is a visual artist/ skilled muralist/ community arts educator who uses her art as a vehicle to represent people and communities whose histories are often lost or co-opted. Through community arts practices, painting, and public art installations, she creates a safe space for dialogue around some of the most profound issues communities and individuals may face. Her work tells stories using richly crafted and emotive imagery to claim and transform spaces into a visual affirmation that reveals the strength and spirit of the community.

For 20 years, Ortiz has designed and created over 50 large-scale public works nationally and internationally. Since 2008, Ortiz has led art for social change public art projects in Costa Rica & Ecuador and through the US Embassy in Fiji, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, Honduras, and Cuba.

Ortiz is a 2018 Pew Fellow, a Rauschenberg Foundation Artist as Activist Fellow, a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist National Fellow, and a Santa Fe Art Institute Equal Justice Resident Artist. In 2016, she received the Americans for the Arts' Public Art Year in Review Award which honors outstanding public art projects in the nation.

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Finding Edith: Surviving the Holocaust in Plain Sight, Edith Mayer Cord

Finding Edith: Surviving the Holocaust in Plain Sight is the coming-of-age story of a young Jewish girl chased in Europe during World War II. Like a great adventure story, the book describes the childhood and adolescence of a Viennese girl growing up against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the religious persecution of Jews throughout Europe. Edith was hunted in Western Europe and Vichy France, where she was hidden in plain sight, constantly afraid of discovery and denunciation.

Biography

Born in Vienna in 1928, Edith Mayer Cord moved to Italy with her family to escape the rise of Nazism in Austria. In 1938, Italy passed the same anti-Jewish laws, similar to the Nuremburg laws, and the entire family was asked to leave. Unable to receive a visa for any country, Edith and her family entered France illegally in April 1939 where they received political asylum.

At the outbreak of World War II, her father was arrested as an enemy alien and sent to Les Milles, a camp near Marseille. Released in 1940, both he and her older brother were arrested again and sent to Gurs. After several other camps, both were deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942. Neither returned.

During that time, Edith and her mother remained in Nice from where they were eventually kicked out as Nice was forbidden to Jews. They received a residence permit in a small village in France where Edith and her mother did farm work. When the mass deportations began, Edith was encouraged to go underground. At fourteen, Edith accepted because she was afraid of what would happen to her if she were arrested and sent to a concentration camp.

 We will announce more speakers. Please check back regularly!