With more than 150 different nationalities working and living in Miami-Dade County, we have become polarized along ethnic, religious, racial and social lines causing clashes within our own cultures and prejudices towards other groups. These feelings have been passed along for generations.
CULTURE CLASH is a writing & visual art project that addresses the prejudices within the different cultures and how these prejudices affect us as individuals, as well as the impact a prejudicial mindset has on the greater community.
To broaden mindsets we challenged participants to write a story about an experience they had with someone who doesn’t look or behave like them, describe how they handled the situation (and the reasons why), the outcome of their actions or reactions and how that outcome made them feel. Then participants, most with little or no prior exposure to the art-making process, learned to trust their inner talents and create drawings to illustrate their stories.
The actual artwork is done on individual pieces of canvas that appear on Tapestry panels that are used to stimulate philosophical dialogues about getting along with people having different cultural backgrounds.