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The Journey of Curating I-DEN-TI-TY

Bonjour bloggers! I’m Sophia Zarders and I’ve been the Getty Multicultural Intern for the summer at ASD. In May, I received a BFA in Illustration from Cal State Long Beach, but I’ll still be there this fall to finish up a couple classes. Thanks to my wonderful supervisor Jason Triefenbach, my curating efforts will be on display with the new art exhibition I-DEN-TI-TY at the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services. As of now I’m feeling pretty excited and nervous while doing some last minute paper cutting, pamphlet stapling, and social media-ing. Since I’m at the finish line, I’d like to share my experience of being a Curatorial Intern!

As soon as I heard I had gotten this incredible internship, I started thinking of my ideal exhibition. I realized that a.) I wanted social justice to be a key theme and b.) I wanted to showcase posters. Almost all of my personal artwork is about injustice and feminism, so I thought that maybe the artists at ASD would want to create works related to those too. As a zine/comic queen, my heart belongs to all sorts of print media. Posters have been used by radical artists for years and were the perfect medium for the concept of this exhibition. I researched other shows that focused on print media, including the interactive All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area at the Oakland Museum of California and the Stedelijk Museum’s permanent collection of political posters in Amsterdam. As I was researching, I happened to be listening to my fave female-fronted early punk band X-Ray Spex and heard the song “Identity.” I think Poly Styrene would be proud! Soon the exhibition’s concept became about the lack of representation of artists with disabilities within the art world and the curating process took off.

At the same time, I began going through the extensive ASD archive. Over 500 artworks from the early 90s to the present were alphabetized, numbered, and photographed into a digital record. Jason helped a lot with organizing the physical archive and making a place in the office for it. Only about 20 pieces were chosen for I-DEN-TI-TY. I’m always going to be attracted to bright and bold works, so many of the archival works in the show make a statement. It’s also no surprise a few prints made the cut!

After figuring out the basis for I-DEN-TI-TY, I visited each ASD location and talked with students to see who would be interested in making an empowering poster for the show. I really hit it off with 6 artists who were each deeply passionate about their art and their media. Whether its music or dance or visual art, each of them were excited to showcase their talents and ideas to the world. Then, I came back with my camera and my computer and began working on the poster designs. The students then chose one of their own pieces for the background, an inspiring phrase to scrawl across the top, and after I took photos of each of them, they chose whichever picture of themselves they liked the most. It was important that these 6 artists had complete authority over the design of their own poster portraits. At its core, I-DEN-TI-TY is about representing artists with disabilities through empowering and inspiring art. One student in particular, Alison, really embraced this concept and chose the phrase “I Believe in Justice” for her poster. When I met up with her to work on the piece, we talked for a long time about the activist movement for people with disabilities. After finalizing all the designs, it was off to the print shop and frame store to get these works brought into reality, as well as a lot of support from Jason.

And now we’re here! It’s the night before the opening reception and everything is coming together. I’d like to thank Jason, all of the instructors and staff at ASD, the Getty Multicultural Intern program, and the incredible ASD artists I was privileged enough to work with during this process. I never really thought of myself as a curator, but I’m so thankful I was given this internship to prove that I am to others and myself. I’m so excited to see the exhibition come to fruition and where this amazing summer internship takes me!

Au revoir, tumblr!

Sophia Zarders

Thank you to the J. Paul Getty Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and Arts Council for Long Beach for supporting I-DEN-TI-TY