Today, I visited the Yorba Buena Center of the Arts to take a look at the special exhibition called "Conceiving Place". This special exhibition focuses on
a term called "civic engagement". Before looking up the definition of that term, I thought civic engagement meant to engage in a community to try to make changes for the greater good, and I thought it was only for inequality or political issues.
According to Wikipedia, Civic engagement or civic participation is the encouragement of the general public to become involved in the political process and the issues that affect them. It is the community coming together to be a collective source of change, political and non-political.
There are a few photos I took at the exhibit. This one is a quote and it made me smile because that's basically my life motto.
This photo made me think about my understanding of civic engagement. I thought it was all about big political issues, but if you think about it, isn't the "idea wall" civic engagement?
In this photo, I couldn't understand why the artist put her mouth an sucked on the metal bars in her performance.
This next photo reminds me of us interns making projects for visitors to do and executing them to the public.
In this last photo, I was wondering if the drawing was "Tasty" from the show "Orange is the New Black" because of the wall of all prison related projects and items.
After seeing the exhibition, my views on civic engagement have changed a little bit. I understand it more. Before my visit, I thought it had to do with protesting and trying to pass bills, all that technical stuff. But it also consists of performance art and political art. During my visit, as I looked at everything in the exhibit, my views started to change and I gradually understood it better.
It was a really quiet, small space, but it made the exhibition more intimate and gave it a peaceful atomosphere. It allowed more empathy and gave the feeling that everything you looked at would slowly sink in, allowing you to better understand. It was really relaxing and I learned something new. If you ever go visit, the book on torture tools/methods was interesting. And disturbing...
- Queena