Art is my neighbor.
Host / Curator: Marcos Pizarro, San Jose State University, Department of Mexican American Studies
Artist: Anne Devine
Marcos Pizarro’s office and other individual offices of the department of Mexican American Studies (MAS) make their home in a university building primarily devoted to athletic facilities. In the hall connecting the offices, wall mounted display cases devoted to the Olympic-class Judo team intermix with those dedicated to MAS. When Anne Devine visited, she was struck by the current lack of identity and disconnect between the department and the physical space that it occupies. Upon entry to the MAS corridor, two large frosted windows flank the door to the department’s conference room. The MAS main office and Marcos’s office are just down the hall. Over the course of the eight years that Marcos has inhabited this space, it has become filled not only with academic work but also with the presence of the professor’s family.
Marcos chose Anne because he felt a certain connection with the activist tones of the work in her portfolio. Based on her first visit and introduction to Marcos, the layering of personal and professional, the subtle interweaving of Marcos’s biological and academic families, most interested Anne. She understood that this space has a story to tell about its occupants. Here, in this physical space, public and private are not polar opposites, but rather stops along a spectrum.
Anne sees her role as an artist working in this space as one of reframing and making more visible the conditions that she sees already present in the space. The first step in her research began at the most private end of the spectrum; Anne conducted a portrait session with Marcos and his immediate family at their home. Using this as a starting point she will spend time in the office space highlighting moments in which public and private mingle.