Episode 381- Arleene Correa Valencia: From rural Mexico to the Napa Valley and back, fulfilling a family dream

Introduction to the podcast

0:00this is the conversation it's a podcast that goes behind the scenes and between the lines of the contemporary art worlds and so far beyond them as well i'm michael shaw welcome to the show this is episode 381 with arlene correa valencia she is an artist based in napa california yes this is a first napa valley famous wine country around the world we definitely talk about that

0:36and how she came to live there and work there the website for the show is the conversationpod.com where you should definitely get off your phone get onto your computer and check out the images of arlene's work her touchly if i'm pronouncing that right which is a rabbit tattoo that is symbolic of sacrifice among other things we talk about tattoos in the far part of the conversation

1:06but you should definitely go check out this image along with all sorts of other images that describe

Migration and family story

1:13arlene's story indeed we get into a lot into migration which is very much part of her story and part of her work and how her family her father in particular has and have contributed to her getting to where she is and sort of fulfilling this family as a unit dream so there's that and much more and i will return to that in a moment i want to give you a personal update for a couple of minutes

1:44if you are not interested in hearing it i would say fast forward about five minutes or so but hopefully you want to hear this so i do not have a serious disease but i assume you would want me to tell you if something big was going on with me and so i'm going to make that assumption and the thing that is big is that short version we may have to move out of our very long-term apartment home the story goes

Housing and renter struggles

2:19that my girlfriend and i have been living in this apartment on the west side of la for a long time a little over a year ago maybe a year and a half ago our building went on the market which concerned us of course but then time went on and time went on and nothing happened and then the price of the building went down and we pretty much forgot about it and thought we were in the clear and we were in the clear because why would anybody want to buy this property that nobody has been bidding on

New apartment owners and potential eviction

2:53it's also has some downsides to it in terms of location uh proximity to an alley and things like that a bar uh and then all of a sudden a couple weeks ago we are alerted by our manager uh aka the landlord's son that a group of young women had purchased the building and it was an escrow and they were going to come by for a quote-unquote inspection the next day we pushed it to the weekend and we met

3:26one woman and their intention is to move into each of the three units in our triplex and that is as far as we know something that can be done we can try to fight it um as somebody who has been involved in the la tenants union there are ways to try to fight back against these but legally as far as we know so far it is something that they can do we're still a little bit limbo because the escrow is not closed

3:57you know hoping that somehow it doesn't but it very well could and then it is a question of going

Relocation and neighborhood changes

4:06through the process i still need to do a couple of workshops get a little bit more details about what our options are but it could simply be that we get a very modest amount of relocation money and we have to figure out where to go and our neighborhood has changed so much since we moved here we definitely could not afford to live in this neighborhood it's even tricky to find a place close to our current rent

4:39in los angeles at least in passable neighborhoods uh in terms of proximity and quality and whatnot

Considering leaving the city

4:45um all to say that we are also considering leaving the city that's consideration a possibility all to say more that if you are a homeowner consider yourself fortunate don't take that safety for granted because as renters things like this or other things can always happen to you especially in a very tight housing market which los angeles definitely falls into that category a couple other things one is i am

5:18very curious to know and you know feel free to reach out if you want to volunteer this information but i can only begin to guess what kind of breakdown you as listeners are in terms of homeowners versus renters los angeles for those of you who don't live in the area may you may and you you may not know this is majority renters it's like something like 61 or 62 percent i read not too long ago is the number of renters in the city um versus homeowners whereas that ratio flips at least you know probably into the

5:5570s homeowners to renters in a lot of the country so i am all that to say i'm very curious to know what the breakdown is of you listeners homeowners to renters i kind of felt like based on the people that i know more than a bit to just a little bit that it is majority homeowners but i could be wrong um so feel free to reach out about that and otherwise i guess i would just say hey if you happen to have a a nice two-bedroom uh adu what have you that you would like to rent out to me at below market rates

6:32do reach out or maybe you have a nice property that you would like to sell for a deep discount reach out to me about that option as well in parentheses ha ha ha right so anyway i wanted to give you that update i thought that you would want to know that so okay so we're back uh what else can i say i mean i think you're going to find this fascinating you are going to hear on this public feed quite a bit more than half of our full conversation to hear the complete conversation

7:05which also includes her talking about her immense extended family her mom comes from a family with 36 brothers and sisters as well as a lot of conversation about ice and why their presence has not been particularly notable in napa the napa wine growing region about her various tattoos and the tattoo artists her family has been working with and so much more i will be putting that on patreon

7:39you can become a patreon supporter for as little as a dollar a month um it will be linked on this episode information page i hope you are doing well happy november um we just hit 14 years of this podcast uh earlier this week so yay pat on the back and whatnot um hope you're doing well thank you very much for listening feel free to reach out if you would like to share anything including whether you are a renter or an owner and where you are all right hope you're well i will talk to you soon

Conversation with Arlene Correa Valencia

8:13well we should talk about the thing that i thought i would start with and we're finally getting there is that you are in napa california right correct so how did you wind up in napa that's a great question yeah well you know it's i i mean i guess i could answer this in so many different ways right because one there's like the academic way of looking at migration patterns and like if you just want to

8:44study migration from a numbers perspective and and what and look at how the patterns have changed throughout the last 50 or 70 years um there's a very clear pattern of migrations from nitrocan into the napa and california region for agricultural labor um so there's that correlation that just like you know answers the question right away for my family however um it happened because we initially came to east la um where i have a lot of family and where i have continued to to touch base with a lot

9:16off and on and throughout my life um but my little sister was very young at the time she was about a month old when we got here and so the heat of of the la area was actually too much for her skin my parents took her to the doctor and the doctor told them that she was having an allergic reaction to the sun which like what a crazy thing right this little this little baby is like blistering up from the the la heat and so the doctor said you know go north and if you go north it'll be cooler up there and the baby will will be better like her skin will will heal and um i mean also another amazing thing

9:51about migration is that while we explore these new places that we've never been we try to find even the smallest breadcrumbs um to feel connected to someone or to something and to feel like we belong there in in one way or another and so my parents were like okay we'll go north and then my mom had a great aunt in napa and she's like we'll call so and so who will call so and so and then maybe we'll be connected to this one person um and my grand my great aunt at the time lived in a two-bedroom

10:22apartment the smallest apartment on jefferson street and she opened the doors in the same way that my parents opened the doors to those that who are coming now and who who wish to come um she opened the doors to to us and we we went into her two-bedroom apartment and we lived there for a couple years until we were able to leave that little apartment complex but we've been in napa since 1997 and so definitely feels like this is this is our permanent home what is napa like i mean people obviously know it as one of the most famous probably the the most well-known wine region in this country

10:59right but what is it actually like is the big question for you right and then i mean it's so interesting too to think about the notion of like what people think of us and what people think of us as a community that is on the wine magazine or that just made like you know whatever top list for food and wine or um it's no different than what people think of you and then who you really think you are there's two different ways of seeing the picture and there's also different ways of accessing it right because if you're wealthy and you come to napa you get to see this beautiful amazing delicious um adult

11:35disneyland that you you're like this is the greatest place in the world um but if you come to napa like my family did with very little money and with the need to to just have to survive you come to a place that is hard it's harsh it's dark it's poverty ridden the educational system is not good for people like us um the labor is extensive it's so hard it deteriorates us the labor um tends to hurt us you know there is like the best way that i can describe it to people oftentimes is by sharing what happened in

12:072017 with the first round of wildfires where everyone in the valley who had money and had access left and it was dead here you know and then our community was left to to harvest the grape when it wasn't even safe to be outside and to breathe the air that was um that was uh creating this toxicity for the grapes and value was put on the grapes and not our community there was more value on the wine than there was on the people actually harvesting it and so it's it's a very black and white place

12:38it's where the majority is obviously white and wealthy but i think we make up 46 percent of the population and so it's very split 50 50 you know and um to this day anyone that is not mexican or white is is seen as like what are you doing here you know you don't belong here you're either the owner of the vineyard or you're working the vineyard and this middle this idea of a middle class is very very limited when you say we how much are we talking mexican heritage versus more specifically your own

13:12heritage i would say that it's like it's pretty pretty mexican like and yeah yeah and because i you know my husband's salvadoran but he grew up in american canyon which is just uh like 20 minutes south of napa and so anything that is not mexican um is is basically non-existent in the valley i mean i'm sure there's very little or some right i can't make a generalization but um and exclude the guatemalans or salvadorans or uh hondureños or anything like that but but

13:43majority is mexican so it was it your aunt that you came and stayed with did you say yeah yeah he was a great aunt i don't know i mean we we call everybody tia i'm like i don't know was she even related to me maybe i don't know yeah no the reason i ask is i i wondered uh if she and or anyone else in her immediate family was involved in uh the you know great harvesting oh yeah absolutely and and everyone in my family um to an extent has also participated in in the

14:18harvest um it's one of the most accessible jobs and it's why people come here it's why people migrate here whether documented or undocumented is because it is one a labor industry that is so easy to access and it's um and there's always work you know there's there's always work and even more now there's always a demand so my my dad was in um in the you know a long long time ago um was also out harvesting my um my niece's dad as a teenager was hard like if it's kind of hard to not be in the

14:51industry um when you live here and you grow up here but did it stop did it stop at at your generation more or less or how how has that played out so far yeah yeah so i guess dad dad was um dad and his brothers were in the harvest for a while um and then you i mean it's not a permanent job right because you're talking about seasonal work um and so later on my my dad uh picked up a more permanent position um in the arts actually and so um yeah so it ended with him um all of my siblings

15:26and i are not in the wine industry obviously and so uh we still partake and indulge and enjoy which is such a weird thing right because we grew up being on the other end of that like being the working hands and now we go wine tasting and it's this like really weird in between worlds have you gone to a winery a tasting and seen relatives who are there doing labor no no but you know like a lot of people i mean not relatives but a lot of people i went to high school with are either pouring wine or

16:00serving or like are involved in the process of making wine my first grade teacher and her family they make amazing wine so we're like everyone is involved in one way or another what are your favorite wines by grape not by uh by winery by grape okay um i am a huge fan of pinots from sonoma i that's like my go-to is anything in the on the coast that gets a little bit of that breeze from the ocean i think

16:31the pinots are excellent um the cabs sometimes i can it depends you know um and then it like a a rose here and they're not a fan of white wine at all but yeah pinots are are we stock that all the time do do reds tend to dominate those two areas or is it is that just my imagination no that i i say that i mean you know i'm not like i'm not huge into wine but i would say that there's a really good variety and there's a lot of people like experimenting and doing some really amazing stuff right which i think

17:03is i mean it's like the arts you know you have to like be willing to push the envelope and um and also like different than the arts you're you're collaborating with the elements um and and that's like another ball game but you're describing a dynamic in which one gets to make the wine right as opposed to harvest the wine so we really are talking about a pretty hard transition it sounds like oh yeah yeah absolutely yeah but you know there's also been like so many beautiful stories of opportunity um where there

17:39have been families in the valley who started when uh whose parents started and came here because of the rasero program and were the ones handling the grapes when they came off the vine to now having established wineries that make some of the best wine in in the valley you know and so you really get to see the way that um love and labor and commitment to to this practice of making wine have changed families in the same way that the arts have changed my family and um you you see i guess the american dream

18:11develop through the act of of the labor for wine did you get into the arts because of your dad you mentioned that your dad was able to transition from the wine industry to the arts you didn't say what exactly but and i'm sure you will but i mean just before you get there is that the through line to you or not necessarily that no it absolutely is yeah yeah so my father when he was young um i actually recently just found a picture of him we're from a small a very small town in nichraca and up in the

18:46mountains called arteaga um it's the craziest place in the world because it takes like five to six hours to get up there and so once you're up there you're pretty like landlocked and it's really hard to get out unless you have a car um and like all the access and things you need to get out of our hometown um but dad grew up there and uh i found this picture of him sitting like lounging with two paintings and he was probably like 17 years old with a big like afro and he just looks so beautiful

19:17to me with his like chocolate skin and he was so proud of those paintings um and dad's dream was always to become a painter that was i think that was who he wanted to be in this life um obviously he put that aside to raise a family to bring us to this country um and to give us the opportunity to follow our dreams and you know growing up as a child in this very complicated place that is so wealthy and yet so poor and that doesn't have the nutrients for me to become who i want to be

19:48i um felt that there was no greater love than an act of love than to make his dreams come true through me um and to like hold on i often describe it as a fire right like this fire that he had to become a painter and to become an artist died down um and it had to it was like this little tiny flame and when i realized that i could take that on um that flame came roaring and um and it it's like it's

20:18a great honor and a responsibility to to continue on this journey of of making paintings and sharing our family and our story with the world but it really for it for absolutely was planted by him and what was that initial career that or or longer term career that he found himself in yeah so at first he was actually like back to the wine um he was he was working with a company here in the valley that was etching bottles of wine with a design and then the artist would go in and hand

20:53paint the label um into these like grooves that were etched into the bottle the glass bottle and um dad absolutely loved this job it was he says to this day besides working with me of course that that it's his favorite job that he's ever had and um he would go in and paint these bottles and then the bottles would either go off to auction or whatever you know they would sell to collectors or stuff like that um but i think at the time he was making six dollars an hour and obviously that was not sustainable for a family of four um and so he had to quit that job

21:29and he was also very frustrated because he was very talented and they loved him and didn't want him to leave but they wouldn't give him better pay because he didn't have an mfa um and because he didn't have a degree and i remember as a child dad would come home and he would you know be yelling and screaming that he had to like fix paintings for artists that had the degree um that were it wasn't up to quality and so then they would give him the bottle and he would have to fix the painting but yet he was making six dollars an hour um and the artists the official artists that were coming in to do this hand painted

22:05work weren't able to deliver the quality that they needed so this was like i i feel like this was his first breakup with the arts um and then he went into more practical work in an interior and exterior home painting um and he's been at that job for i mean over 20 years now um and he's a master painter um now he gets to work with finishes and so he is what i call a color theorist and um a chemist put together because he can work on any surface and deliver any uh like any finish that you need

22:41um you show him a picture or a sample of what you want and on what surface and he comes up with the chemistry to create the the i guess the formula um which is incredible his brain is amazing and his understanding of color and is it's just like the most amazing thing in the world that is amazing um that those are amazing qualities for you to have access to oh yeah yeah especially when i mess up a painting because i'm like you know i'm currently working on a mate which is a mexican paper and it's

23:16like very marbled very beautiful and if i drip paint in the wrong place and have like a bright blue on an area that's supposed to look earthy i say dad come help me i i messed up the painting and so he'll come and he'll touch it up and it like disappears it's like i never did anything wrong so he's really good at those like faux finishes and creating recreating surfaces to match others and you would never be able to tell that i dripped you know acrylic paint on something that wasn't supposed to be there you know what i'm thinking as you're saying that um there i'm sure there's been

23:49an article about this if not it's definitely been part of articles but the phenomenon of when artists big artists big artists usually if not always have shows typically at a museum right and they have the acknowledgements you know certainly there's the dogmatic right but there's often usually acknowledgements and there have just been a couple of cases where that artist will include a list of the assistants that have worked with them so all to say that maybe you haven't had

24:22particularly that scenario yet but when you do it sounds like you would be remiss if you didn't include your dad among those names well you know what i oh when i when i talk about the work i always talk about how it's our practice or our painting or our whatever and people are often like what do you mean ours like what is like who else is involved and i'm like oh i i just assume everybody knows that my dad had a hand in it you know yeah that like that and it's for me it's like i mean it's not just

24:55me but currently um i'm working like i said i'm working on paper and so there's a paper maker we work with a family of artisans in puebla in mexico and they make the paper and i i always acknowledge that the craft begins with them um it's then handed off to us and then my family takes it on and it's really all about collaboration i mean in all of the work that we do it's about collaboration it's about talking about our community and highlighting the way that our community comes together to create this visual language of survival and love and pain and all of these um extremities of invisibility

25:31and visibility right so i mean it's i i've already done it where i'm like that you know this is my dad's painting and or this is his part and this is mine um most recently my my well i guess she was three at the time but my niece who's now six um my dad and i were making a painting together and for my first solo show at catherine clark gallery in san francisco and um my niece who was three decided that she also wanted to make the same painting so she's sitting next to dad and she's

26:02mimicking his painting and it's of the the aztec calendar and so i i actually ended up putting all all of the works in the show it was mine and my dad's and then my niece's was also you know like a very cheap white piece of paper it was in the show and um the all the works got acquired by the cancer at stanford and so um it was a really beautiful way of showing how we work in unison and together right really the brush is not separate from my dad and from my niece and um it's it's all of

26:36our work wow one thing i wanted to go back to before i forget about it when you were talking about your dad's work with the winery doing you know doing the art for six dollars an hour it sounds like the winery was putting the somewhat arbitrary limitations on him that institutions academic institutions do and i wonder if i mean maybe it was just like the most obvious sort of way

27:09to exploit him or you know but do you think there's some connection between the winery and academia in terms of like oh you don't have an mfa therefore we can't raise your rate i think it's a bottom line exploitation it's labor exploitation and i think like we can talk about the best wines we can talk about the best art um what we think has value and what we as a society hold to have value um but at the end of the day everybody cares about what their profit margins look like and i think that having dad

27:44on payroll for six dollars an hour made the most sense when you can auction off a bottle for thousands and thousands of dollars and pay you know less than 100 bucks to have that bottle painted or something like that yeah and so you know obviously that enrages me now to think about that um i and i very actively in the studio do not do that you know whoever i'm working with i'd rather compensate them than then make sure like that i which is also not smart because i also have to survive you know so it has

28:16to be a balance but um but definitely it's all it has been and the industry is about that we're talking about capitalism right so um it has been about exploitation and it will continue to be that way until we change something yeah who was it that wanted the painting slash drawing that your niece made for that show oh it's um it was acquired by the canter art museum at stanford oh so it was a package deal they they bought everything yeah they bought my niece's painting the painting that i

28:49collaborated with my father on and they also bought letters that i wrote to my father in 1996 um which it's a beautiful archive of 40 something letters that i have um where we exchanged mail while during a period of time where we were not together um and i wrote things to him like messages in spanish that say uh daddy don't forget about me um please come back for me i want to be with you

29:19take me with you and so these letters are actually the foundation of my practice and the work that i make um it all it all comes back to these like very distilled messages of separation what was the story why why were you separated yeah so um dad was actually like many fathers he was the first one to come to the u.s um my mother my brother and i stayed at home in mitragan um in 1996 and then we were reunited

29:50in 1997 so i see yeah so so he was basically paving the uh the road in the states while you guys stayed home correct and what about your sister who was struggling with the uh blisters from the sun how did that change when you guys moved to northern california well you know so when dad left in 96 he left mom pregnant um and then my little sister was born in december of 96 and then we came to the u.s um in 97

30:27like the first uh months in in 97 so um my you know interesting question because my little sister though she was born in mexico and um has a mexican citizenship and a mexican uh birth certificate uh very much does not connect to the country in the same way that my brother and i do um she obviously was 32 days old and so for her um she is as as american as anyone else um and her connection

30:59you know i have memories to to my grandfather's home and um so does my brother obviously and celebrating our birthdays and in mitragan um and she has none of that uh very different very different experiences wow there was an implication that you made about your sister that she is disconnected from her mexican at least identity if not heritage or is that kind of where you're going with that well kind of i mean not not necessarily she's very connected it's just not i guess there's not that

31:32like longing um my brother and i uh the three of us were daca recipients and um were considered dreamers i was a dreamer for 10 years up until recently and um so we both have that shared experience of being lumped in with um the 800 000 dreamers and and you know while my brother and i had this longing for going home and returning home um and getting to go back home to our mexico she never really had

32:02that um and you know it's like an interesting experience to be in the same family to grow up in under the same circumstances and to feel at least i felt that part of me was not complete because i couldn't return back back home to mexico for a long time and she was always like i don't get it like why would you want to go back there like you know like very disconnected um but not intentionally not like she rejects that part of herself it's just a different experience you you said that you were

32:32daca for a while and then that recently changed and recent are we talking about recently between 2020 and 2024 yes and that's what i mean by good timing right okay yeah so and i mean really like it's just such a bizarre journey right because when you think about migration and status um often i i feel like i don't i no longer think that people think it's like standing in line and and you know like

33:06ordering a deli sandwich but often often times i find myself having to tell people that like you don't just stand in line and say like hey i'm deserving of this give it to me right because it surprises me how how many conversations i run into with people that they still think that way and i'm like wait we we still think that like you know if you're a good person and you have nothing on your record and you like paid your taxes that you should you have a way um a pathway to citizenship and um it's so much more complicated than that obviously and today even more so but um in in the early 2000s uh

33:44while i was a daca recipient i was invited to do an exhibition in mexico and under you know i'm like i i nerd out on reading on all of the legal uh definitions of what it means to be daca and what it means to be undocumented and all these things and so one of the i guess loopholes in the in system was that if you have a job you could apply for advanced parole which is a permit that allows you to re-enter the country only if you're approved for like a legal uh exit and re-entry and so you

34:21have to prove that you have uh that you have a work or that you have an emergency in your home of origin and so technically my job is an artist and if i was invited to do an exhibition in mexico then i could go home to mexico and then re-enter the country legally because this is my job right and so i figured this out and i was like i need someone to invite me to do a show in mexico um and then i could apply for this thing and i could go home for the very first time since 1997 and that's

34:55exactly what happened i was invited to do an exhibition um uh at the university in puebla um i went through this very extensive process of proving that i was an artist and that um i had this exhibition that i had to attend for the opening um and that was approved it was like completely out of a movie because i had the flight spot like the exhibition was going up the next day i had um at the time i was making textile works and so i had a suitcase full of textiles and i had to go to um the immigration

35:28office in san francisco to prove my case you know that i had to go to work the next day and it were either going to approve it in that interview or they were going to deny and i walked out of there with a piece of paper that said that i could go home to mexico and come back legally and um it was the most afraid i've ever been in my life because as you know a piece of paper does not guarantee anything and it's not a passport and it's not a green card it's just a piece of paper um but i knew that this was my way of going home and that it was it was either this or or i was going to stay here

36:04and continue living under this fear that i'd never go home um so i did it and i we had an we had a great exhibition um it was completely life-changing and and it gave me um also the opportunity to apply for a green card and so all of these things kind of snowballed um at the right time where was it in mexico it was in puebla which is where exactly it's two it's a different state but it's two hours outside of mexico city okay got it and it came about without you're having to provoke it engineer it or

36:40otherwise i push push push it into being i would say that there was some influence of sorts but it happened and that was important and i learned the system and we used it correctly legally we use the system legally right right right yeah well i mean you know we could do a whole other podcast on documentation migration legal status uh you know arbitrary government you know decision making and

37:17policy and all that kind of stuff right but the last question that came to mind when you were talking about going back for the show and making it happen and saying i mean you know i'm kind of made it happen you know and it worked and it came off was actually more than what i had just been thinking about regarding migration and and status in the paper that you talked about you know which may or may not mean anything was can you use that strategy if we can call it that you know whisper whisper strategy

37:51that you used in the the western art world in approaching opportunities or making them happen can we use it i feel like we we have to i mean in other words is there a crossover in what you did in terms of what artists have or might do here absolutely can you can you sketch that out a little bit for us i would say that like i use that approach in my entire career i would say that i wouldn't be

38:26here without like reading the fine print and saying i can inject myself in the situation and play the role that you need me to play in order to benefit and protect myself and my family um and and i'll just sketch it out for you you know i was undocumented until obama um signed the daca act and then when

38:57that happened i i was at a community college for four years after graduating high school because i didn't have the status to go to a school an art school university and i couldn't afford to pay for it um myself obviously my parents i would never even i at the time i couldn't even tell my parents i wanted to go to college because they would probably cry that that it couldn't give me that right so i just pretended that i didn't have these dreams and when i became a daca recipient um i i realized that okay

39:30here's an opportunity where i can actually go to college as any other person um but there's a limited number of resources that i can actually access where are those resources who are those resources how do we get how do i get them for me right and this is when at the time diversity was like up and coming as as a subject in universities and it was really important that diversity was present and so i made myself as diverse or tokenized as possible and i received a diversity scholarship it

40:07was called the diversity scholarship to california college of the arts and without that scholarship i would have never been able to go to art school and um you know when i wanted to go to grad school i was under the same scrutiny of like okay i know i'm a daca recipient i know i have no funding i know that any funding is very limited because it cannot be government funding so how do i once again vouch for myself and get myself to an mfa and then i played the card of like okay i got accepted here this is what i have to offer these are the like news media outlets i'm willing to talk to in the

40:42interviews i'm willing to give that might be a little sensational but like it's going to get the attention that i need to get in order to like justify um be like a seat at the table and i think that my entire career and my entire life has been based on that is like learning how to play the cards you know and and also playing into like the tokenism and being like sure i'll be your undocumented diversity person because you're also going to make sure that i'm taken care of um and that i have what i need in order to get for this to be mutually beneficial you know um it's not

41:18something that i'm like proud of or that i want for my nieces and nephews at all i wish that they didn't have to do it but i do believe that it set the foundation um for us to be openly talking about what it means to tokenize students um who fall under the diversity spectrum right or who identify with like that that uh yeah that that label um but absolutely something that struck me that among those the descriptions you made was the interviews you know that you sort of strategically chose to give

41:54so it sounded to me correct me if i'm wrong that you were sort of building this um public persona right for this was after you got the scholarship for california college of the arts and then between then and getting into grad school to build that because it wasn't maybe as straightforward as being the tokenized you know diversity student you also were or instead were building this persona based on

42:26certain strategic interviews you gave did i get that is that kind of what i heard yeah no and that's exactly correct so my one of my very first interviews um like happened by chance and it was uh someone who was interested in learning about what it's like to be undocumented in the arts and in in the in the system of education right and i gave this interview just like totally being honest and not holding back and saying all right you want to know well i'm going to tell you what my school is

42:57doing and what they're not doing and you know how they're focusing on these issues but when i bring up these issues of not having the right resources or not like you know simple things like i could never go to my parents and say like hey i need help filling out this financial aid form can you give me this family information like i i my parents would be like so lost right and any other normal student um would have resources or could go to an office and say like hey this is this is this is what i need to done

43:30how do you how can you help me i would go to the to the office at cca and i would say like hey i'm undocumented um this i i need help with this and then it would just be like a long line of like people that had no nothing for me and it would just like go nowhere and i would not have the right help so i was very open and honest about that and um and i think that's what exactly what built that persona you know that people were like oh arlene's willing to talk like how do we keep her happy and how do we make sure that as a representative of not only our school but also undocumented people and this idea

44:03of diversity that she that she is feels comfortable um advocating um accurately for her community right so um all of these things were like building blocks to creating the person that i had to be in order to have these opportunities what was that first platform that you interviewed with that you mentioned yeah i i was interviewed by seth rodney um for hyper allergic in 2017 um and it's actually an article that's no longer online i had to have him pull it um because i i like i said i was so honest

44:38on that i was too honest also about myself and my life so later on i got into some trouble with like um immigration stuff and i was my attorneys were like hey we have to pull that you know they can't say that and i was like okay so so we ended up pulling it um but it definitely served a purpose at the time right okay got it so it was only within our context that's what not what i was imagining so that's that's helpful to clarify yeah um yeah i mean like i said early just a little while ago you know we could

45:14spend a whole episode and more talking about all you know migration documentation status and so on but just specifically to what you were describing with your own situation what it made me wonder is now that presumably if not very clearly things have fallen off a cliff in that category is there a scenario in which your extended family takes in you know a prospective arts student

45:51in some way you know what i mean or is that a little too uh i don't know complicated and even risky maybe what do you mean well you talked about so so just to clarify you talked about the um family members who you adopt right in your family so what i'm imagining is the way that you were helped by the institution through you know tokenism right that there and yeah and i could see how this is confusing as a question but i'm

46:30imagining like is there a scenario in which a young artist who is undocumented is somehow adopted by by some part of your your family that's just a thought that came to mind yeah oh okay i i yeah i can see i can see the question um i don't know maybe maybe not like who i i i will never say never but also you know it is something that i've thought about like for myself is how do i um help other people who are undocumented know that there is a path

47:07yeah or how do i help them believe that they they can find a path right because i i'm 32 now and when i started going to the junior college i was 16 years old um a long time ago and there was something about that 16 year old who said i am facing all of these stop signs and red lights but i'm gonna power through them right like i have no money i have no social security i have no access to anything um but i'm

47:39gonna do it anyway no matter what it takes and i think that whatever was happening in my life and however i was acting was um fueled by all these amazing people who believed in me who like my parents were cheering me on and helped me even if it was the smallest help i was a nanny for 10 years um and i think that the kids that i raised helped me and their parents helped me by allowing me to have money to pay for the printmaking class at the community college or the painting class you know like all these

48:13things like all those people built this this this artistic um practice and and if it wasn't for them we wouldn't be here right and so oftentimes i ask myself like how do i help someone as well right whether it's through collaboration um with indigenous people artisans um by mentoring other artists of color or artists that come from various immigration status or just sharing the story right

48:44like because just sharing with people like hey if you like read all this and do your research and do whatever like maybe there's a way like maybe you can cram yourself through this wall and come out the other way so maybe you know it's like not a physical adopting but it is um it is a form of of helping others that that i i hope to achieve for sure yeah i mean it is noteworthy that it doesn't seem like there's been from what i've gathered of course i haven't you know i'm trying to keep my distance

49:17from the news as a lot of us are but it doesn't seem like there's been i haven't heard about much activity ice-wise in northern california um especially i mean la is kind of the um ground you know zero for for all of that activity but has northern california been fortunate in that regard relatively speaking or is that maybe is there another way to look at it yeah you know um i think maybe

49:55there are multiple angles in which we can look at the situation and try to understand it right because um one of the things that i like to highlight is that this um interjection of ice coming into our communities is not new right it's new to the media and it's new to people like maybe yourself um who have not been in it for the last 30 40 years whatever it may be um but to us it's not new to us we know how

50:31to live knowing that we could be caught if we go to the grocery store or church or on our way to work or at work um we know that this is a consequence um i remember as a child always fearing and wondering if i would come home to an empty house or if my brother and i were going to get picked up from school if anyone was ever coming right so the these memories of um knowing that you could be detained

51:03live in your dna as an undocumented person and you just sort of learn how to navigate them obviously they are a lot more intense um right now and it does make you question and ask yourself well why is it not as intense in an area like napa valley that is fueled by undocumented work and that is sustained by agricultural work um at the hands of undocumented and mixed status people and i think the simple

51:37answer there is nothing more than you know following them up the product and following the money and looking at what we're producing here versus what maybe la is producing right um i i i mean it's not funny but it makes me giggle that i know for a fact that uh the wealthy people and the people who are in control want to have dinner tonight with their fancy cab and their pinots and they want to be able to host

52:09their friends with a really good wine you know and great art on the walls and if you take that away from them you're taking um you're taking things that are important to them and that are also impacting maybe their businesses or whatever investments they have and so i think at the end of the day maybe we're not seeing the same level of um of ice activity here because it wouldn't benefit them right and that is awful to think about because we are all deserving um of safety and security

52:43i hope you enjoyed that to listen to a whole extra half hour from slightly before this actual recording

Patreon and additional content

52:55started to well beyond it we have some of the content that i described in the intro go to patreon.com slash the conversation pod and you can either buy the full episode as a one-off or you can become an ongoing subscriber via our patreon page for as low as a dollar a month patreon.com slash the conversation pod all right thank you very much for listening and i will talk to you again

53:26fairly soon until then be well and ciao for now you