Engagement with the arts is integral to justice education at the center. It helps us pay close attention to the realities of injustice while holding out hopeful visions of justice.
This exhibit features digital images of the work on display from our 2022 exhibit. Art was submitted by undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College. Selections were made by the jurors, South Bend artists Laurie Rousseau and Ramiro Rodriguez, who serves as Chief Art Preparator in the Snite Museum of Art. We hope you enjoy the rich collection of works in varied media responding to the prompt: Explore contemporary realities in which dignity is threatened or enhanced. We hope it informs and inspires our work for a more just world.
We Are Sacred, Too
by Zoë Case
In one of my art history classes, we read about an art critic who said “MoMA should really be called the ‘Museum of Early Twentieth-Century Northern European Art’.” Art museums have historically not been welcoming spaces for people of color, especially with the deep history of colonialism. As a Black artist, I loved going to museums as a child, but I never really felt a connection to the art because it fundamentally was not made for children like me. But Black children are works of art in and of themselves, and while they don’t deserve to be ogled, they do deserve to feel represented and beautiful, and realize that they are sacred too.
Black children are works of art in and of themselves, and deserve to realize that they are sacred too.
Bo(y)tanical Garden
Marc Phillippon
I aim to satirize some of the rigid barriers of gender...
Blending classical portraiture with kitsch and decorative art, my work seeks to address the rigid barriers created by gender roles in the tradition of oil painting, as well as in the presentation and expression of male identity. I use vivid colors and surrealist imagery inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses to portray a lively depiction of the male body blooming with various plants and flowers that exist together as a unified organism. Through this approach, I aim to satirize some of the rigid barriers of gender prevalent in the history of oil painting and male self-expression in general, while also depicting the male figure in harmony with nature and the passage of seasonal time.
Enclosed Gaza Border
Francesca Casarella
Nothing can be seen except the extended gray walls of the Gaza border. There is not a soul in sight and the walls stand enclosed in this photograph taken in March 2022 by the frame of a watch area turned art installation, titled Path to Peace (Netiv L’Shalom), a short distance from the Netiv Ha’Asara Moshav in Israeli territory. Grave injustice and rampant violence take place on both sides of the wall, but the photograph captures the mute obduracy of the wall itself caricatured by the bright hues of an installation that cries out for peace and the human desire for a better, brighter life.
Injustice and rampant violence take place on both sides of the wall but the photograph captures the mute obduracy of the wall itself
Exodus
Clare Barloon
This piece depicts a climate change-impelled migration. Climate change, and its effects on the human population—especially the most vulnerable—is something today’s society has yet to come to terms with. As the planet heats and our environments change, will we care for those who suffer the most, or will we shrink back into comfortable ignorance, pretending not to see what is happening right before our eyes? In my piece, the dark figures begin to fade into the background; their relationship to the viewer and the landscape is tenuous. As the figures approach (or depart), they seem to herald in an ominous red sky, signaling that this is only the beginning.
Perspective
Arturo Casiano
Is the worthiness of esteem or respect to be measured by one’s accomplishments? What if I said this artist is a father of seven and a grandfather of eight? That he is skilled in the trade of mill and cabinet making, has 332 hours of voluntary service through hospice care, has an associate's degree through Ball State, and is working on completing his bachelor’s degree.
The question of dignity, art, life—it’s all about perspective.
Say I told you this artist is currently working on his 23rd year of incarceration.
Now do you believe I’m dignified?
Marsha P. Johnson
David Chritton
This piece is part of a broader artistic attempt to represent trans people joyously. Despite increasing representation within mainstream media, there remains a preoccupation with queer trauma and suffering that reduces the complexity of a human life to one element. To have only your pain made visible is a kind of dehumanization, and I believe that dignity can be restored through depictions of a fuller range of experience. Marsha P. Johnson was undeniably a pioneering trans woman of color who fought heroically for queer rights, but she was also a human being, a creature of joy.
untitled
Mario Cuellar
The welcome rug with the US flag has my Mexican ID stenciled using flour as a temporary material, representing my experience with the migration process and how you have to allow several things to step over you to be able to enter.
The second part shows the basic questions that migration agents use in their interrogation: Why are you visiting the US? Who will you be visiting? Where are you going to be staying? How much money do you have for this trip? Who is paying for this trip, etc.? These questions are stenciled on the floor using flour, and I’m using them as a theater of the oppressed-ish technique so anyone can experience a little of what it feels to be interrogated by migration authorities. The use of flour is cathartic so the questions disappear the more people walk over them.
The last part is a wood frame that resembles an entrance and a security arc. Once you walk through that there is a painting of Saint Xolita on the wall, a new saint using the symbolism of the Xoloitzcuintles as the guides to the underworld. She is the one that will help you cross anywhere.
The Child
Randy Farrell
There is a connection to a child that any parent or grandparent knows. A child has an elementally innate ability to make you look outside of yourself. To something so precious, so noble as to stop time in this moment and carry you away to Neverland. Where there is peace, this silence when the heavy burdens and anxiety of day to day bursts away in an instant. Gone is the bitterness, the resentment, the burning anger, and the guilt that’s come as a product of one’s affliction. Left in these little eyes staring back, where shines a light so bright. Giving meaning to every struggle, every hardship, and “the darkest of nights.” In this moment, they become just a rough journey and “This Child” the most worthy of destinations.
Redemption
Josh Fisher
The expression of dignity seen in this construct of water color shows the path of retrieval. When the individual is placed in a correctional institution all of their honor is stripped away but can be restored from the inside. The road bearing many cracks and pits, each inflicting their individual attack at the core, signifies the work it takes to restore dignity. Restoration for redemption is not an easy process and varies in length of time—usually based on individual commitment. The choices leading to dignity’s removal are not as significant in comparison to the ones that follow its retrieval.
Remembrance
Allan George
This picture was taken during the Act Justly: Racial Justice in America immersion trip through the Center for Social Concerns. How does one convince oneself that it is okay to terrorize innocent people just based on the color of ones skin? People spewed such vile hate through their words and actions that they went as far as to bomb a black parish. Walking through Kelly Ingram park and seeing the site of such a horrific bombing led to me going through a wave of emotions. Human dignity was violated that day where four young black where killed in a terrorist bombing, what are we doing nowadays to call out other human dignity violations present all around us?
Tesseract Rising
Tristan Huo
This self-portrait deals with my intersectional identity and what it feels like to grow up being Catholic, gay, and Asian in America. I chose to represent these unrealistic institutional ideas of what society wanted me to be as the shiny golden shapes that have weighed me down into a void of silence; but as I’ve become more aware of who I am, and critical of these flawed systems, the part of me that has been submerged in darkness has risen to the surface. The marginalized have the power to uproot the monolithic structures that have long kept them subjugated.
Growing Into Womanhood
Kieu Anh Nguyen Le
My piece explores the politics around beauty by focusing on the role makeup plays in self-image. This is a self-portrait in which the artist is completely absent. Instead of depicting my face, the piece shows areas where makeup is applied. The viewer will never know what I actually look like; all they are given are the carefully curated faces I choose to present. Each of the images represents a style of makeup that I had have starting from early high school. The yellow piece: age 14; pink: 15-16; purple: 17-18.
I wanted to capture how both my self-expression and insecurities cumulated throughout the years within my makeup. The viewer is intended not to be able to see their own face either as their reflection is to be obscured by these pieces.
The Beauty Behind Vitiligo
Marivel Lopez
After years of trying to hide vitiligo I had become numb to it. I always thought of myself as ugly and different, which really affected my confidence. Finally I told myself that this needs to stop because I am beautiful in my own skin and this is what makes me unique. Every race deals with vitiligo in their own way, but I want my piece of art to speak to people about how it affected me. I once wished it was gone, but I’ve now come to realize it’s a wonderful part of who I am and hope that others can see their vitiligo in that way, too.
We All Bleed Crimson
Gráinne Malone
I got a paper cut a little while ago. I watched a drop of blood fall rise on my skin. Part of my inside on the outside world. I looked at my hands. I thought “Our skin may be different colors, but don’t we all bleed the same?” Seeing and reading this piece I want people to see beyond the color of our skin and think about how it is what on the inside that makes us all human and equal. If our skin color divides us can’t the color of our blood unite us?
dotted madonna
Julia McKenna
This piece shows me holding a baby while working at St. Margaret’s House this past summer. The baby is surrounded by a sun-like halo. The piece is framed by art that children and I created over the summer (used with their permission). I wanted this piece to speak to the holiness and dignity that I feel radiating from every individual. Working with children is so valuable to me because I see the potential and future each child has. Just as Mary carried Jesus, I carried children at St. Margaret’s House knowing that they were God’s own creation full of life and love.
Memento Mori
Lili Payne
Made in the image and likeness of God, each person is a reflection of God’s glory. Our dignity is found not in what we can do or achieve but rather it is revealed in God’s profound love for each one of us. The delicate leaf portrays the fragility, beauty, and sacredness of human life, inviting us to value, respect, and protect the dignity of every human person from conception to natural death.
Close the Sky
CJ Rodgers
In this piece, I sought to reflect the sentiments of the Ukrainian people concerning the response by the West at the start of the Russian invasion. In a statement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he said, "The blame for every death of every person in Ukraine from air strikes and in blocked cities, of course, lies with the Russian state, the Russian military, those who give and those who carry out criminal orders, who violate all the rules of warfare, who deliberately exterminate the Ukrainian people." Zelenskyy then added, "The responsibility for this lies also with those who have not been able to make an obviously necessary decision somewhere in the West...those who have not yet secured the Ukrainian sky from Russian murderers."
The Colors You Painted Me With
Luis Sosa Manubes
A queer child in rural Mexico quickly learns to disguise himself.
My work is shaped by painful experiences of my childhood as a result of homophobia in Tabasco, Mexico. At a young age, I learned to cover my wounds and mask them with beautiful colors that would prevent the viewer from seeing the cracks inside of me.
“The Colors You Painted Me With” is a reflection of the way I learned to protect myself from homophobia as a kid. The colors and patterns are inspired by the Mexican traditions of alebrijes—brightly colored animals that were getaways in which my younger self could express the colors I felt inside.
I seek for my work to express the conflict of love I feel for my culture while acknowledging the hurt that has been caused due to the harmful norms that prevail in Mexico.
The American Dream
Elena Soto
My dad is an immigrant from Mexico, so I wanted to make a piece that represents the hopes of immigrants when they come to the United States and the hardships they go through while living here. There is a lot of bigotry and hatred towards immigrants in this country that is completely undeserved and threatens immigrants’ feelings of self-worth and dignity. They come here with the hope of creating a better life for themselves and their families but instead are treated inhumanely by those around them. The butterflies bleeding all over people grasping for hope with destroyed buildings in the background represent the destruction of their hope and their ideas of what America is really like as they face bigotry.
Last Night's Dinner
Alyssa Sutanto
Food is a major source of joy in my personal life. It comforts me, excites me, and sustains me. For incarcerated people in one of the hundreds of prisons in the US, food can be seen as a method of dehumanization or form of punishment. Often unhealthy, unappetizing, and sometimes inedible foods are served to incarcerated populations, with little concern for their physical and mental health. People have reported moldy, spoiled, or bug-infested meals. When food is necessary to sustain human life, the low standards for prison food rob people of their dignity and humanity.
The Domino Effect Difference
Elizabeth Zaczyk
My creative work illustrates the dignity of human life. A mother must be the first to show love for her child in order for the child to make a difference in the lives of others. If you think back to movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, you may recall George Bailey wishing he was never born. Seeing how he changed the lives of many, he took back what he said. Whether you think you are making an impact in someone’s life, you are. You don’t have to be a firefighter or a doctor to make a difference.