Activist Artist Spotlight: Favianna Rodriguez

We meet one of activism’s most creative and outspoken proponents — a whirlwind of energy and ideas!

By: EricW | Apr 5, 2009 |  0

Categories: Arts & Artists, Artevist

Way back when Artevist was just a pea-sized idea in my head, I came across a website that excited and inspired me, and ultimately added to the critical mass that led to Artevist.

That website was Favianna.com, the cyber home of Favianna Rodriguez, whose real home is Oakland, CA — or any other place where activism needs a creative hand. A few weeks ago, that was Vancouver, and just a few blocks from my home.

'Favy', as her friends often call her, was in town as a guest of Web of Change, a very cool Vancouver-based organization that hosts events and workshops dealing with technology, media and social change. Web of Change invited her to speak in the heart of Canada's poorest neighbourhood, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, on the role of the creative process in activism.

Favianna is a creative dynamo, and meeting her in person it wasn't hard to see where all the amazing energy behind posters, flyers and paintings comes from.

Her work and passion covers a lot of ground — women and women of colour, immigration, sexuality, cultural identity, environment, housing and urban development. (Sounds a bit like Artevist actually — damn there's a lot to be worked up about!)

As if her creative work wasn't enough to keep her busy, she co-founded and is a big part of Oakland's, Eastside Cultural Alliance and more recently, the Tumis creative agency, which is dedicated to global social justice work.

This is only a small sampling of a huge body of work so be sure to check out her websites and be inspired. She also has some T-shirts for sale somewhere (I saw them so know they exist), and one of her most recent projects is the publication of Reproduce & Revolt with co-author Josh MacPhee from Justseeds — another great artists' collective that we'll be featuring shortly.

The book Reproduce & Revolt highlights the works of dozens of activist artists from around the world and presents it for royalty free use through Creative Commons licenses. You can find it through Favianna's website, or at Justseeds.org along with a lot of other awesome stuff. I highly recommend checking out all these sites. You can also follow Favianna's Blog as well as her Twitter posts.

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