Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Rodriguez, Favianna
- Abstract:
- Papers of Favianna Rodriguez, an American artist, activist, and teacher based in Oakland, California.
- Extent:
- 10 Linear Feet (3 oversize flat-boxes, 1 document box, 2 flat-file drawers).
- Language:
- The collection is in English with some materials in Spanish.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of Item], Favianna Rodriguez papers, CEMA 148. Department of Special Research Collections, UC Santa Barbara Library
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The collection currently contains graphic art posters and prints on various media, newspaper articles, designs and sketches of artwork, and a video from her talk at UC Santa Barbara. Her papers will grow over time to eventually include art sketches, lectures, correspondence, photographs, videos and more ephemera.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Favianna Rodriguez is a celebrated printmaker and digital artist based in Oakland, California. Using high-contrast colors and vivid figures, her composites reflect literal and imaginative migration, global community, and interdependence. Whether her subjects are immigrant day laborers in the U.S., mothers of disappeared women in Juárez, Mexico, or her own abstract self portraits, Rodriguez brings new audiences into the art world by refocusing the cultural lens. Through her work we witness the changing U.S. metropolis and a new diaspora in the arts.
Favianna is renown for her vibrant posters dealing with issues such as war, immigration, globalization, and social movements. By creating lasting popular symbols - where each work is the multiplicand and its location the multiplier - her work interposes private and public space, as the art viewer becomes the participant carrying art beyond the borders of the museum.
Rodriguez has lectured widely on the use of art in civic engagement and the work of artists who, like herself, are bridging the community and museum, the local and international. As a teacher, Rodriguez has conducted workshops and presentations at Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles), El Faro de Oriente (Mexico), de Young Museum (San Francisco), the Habana Hip Hop Festival (Habana, Cuba), as well as Williams College and The Commonwealth Club. In 2003, she co-founded the Taller Tupac Amaru printing studio to foster resurgence in the screenprinting medium. She is co-founder of the EastSide Arts Alliance (ESAA) and Visual Element, both programs dedicated to training young artists in the tradition of muralism. She is additionally co-founder and president of Tumis Inc., a bilingual design studio helping to integrate art with emerging technologies.
Rodriguez has exhibited at Museo del Barrio (New York); de Young Museum (San Francisco); Mexican Fine Arts Center (Chicago); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco); Sol Gallery (Providence, RI); Huntington Museum and GalerÃa Sin Fronteras (Austin, TX); and internationally at the House of Love and Dissent (Rome), Parco Museum (Tokyo), as well as in England, Belgium, and Mexico. She was a 2005 artist-in-residence at San Francisco's prestigious de Young Museum, a 2007-2008 artist-in-residence at Kala Art Institute (Berkeley, CA), and received a 2006 Sea Change Residency from the Gaea Foundation (Provincetown, MA). Rodriguez is recipient of a 2005 award from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
Rodriguez is co-editor of Reproduce and Revolt! with internationally renowned stencil artist and art critic Josh MacPhee (Soft Skull Press, 2008). An unprecedented contribution to the Creative Commons, the 200-page book contains more than 600 bold, high-quality black and white illustrations for royalty-free creative use. Her artwork also appears in The Design of Dissent (Rockport Publishers, 2006), Peace Signs: The Anti-War Movement Illustrated (Edition Olms, 2004), and The Triumph of Our Communities: Four Decades of Mexican Art (Bilingual Review Press, 2005).
Biography adapted from Stanford University's artist profile. https://diversityarts.stanford.edu/people/favianna-rodriguez
- Acquisition information:
- Donated by Favianna Rodriguez.
- Processing information:
-
Processed by Callie Bowdish and Mari Khasmanyan, 2013. Additional material processed by Leonardo Vargas and Lauren Cain, 2015. Supplemental material processed by Mari Khasmanyan and Pablo Amaya, 2018. Finding Aid updated by Rebecca Vasquez, February 2025.
- Arrangement:
-
This collection is arranged by format into three series:
- Series I: Graphic art materials
- Series 2: Posters
- Series 3: Videos
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
The collection is open for research.
- Terms of access:
-
Property rights to the collection and physical objects belong to the Regents of the University of California acting through the Department of Special Research Collections at the UCSB Library. All applicable literary rights, including copyright to the collection and physical objects, are protected under Chapter 17 of the U.S. Copyright Code and are retained by the creator and the copyright owner, heir(s), or assigns.
All requests to reproduce, quote from, or otherwise reuse collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Department of Special Research Collections at UCSB at special@library.ucsb.edu. Consent is given on behalf of the Regents of the University of California acting through the Department of Special Research Collections at UCSB as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s), or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or their assigns for permission to publish where the UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of Item], Favianna Rodriguez papers, CEMA 148. Department of Special Research Collections, UC Santa Barbara Library
- Location of this collection:
-
UC Santa Barbara LibrarySanta Barbara, CA 93106-9010, US
- Contact:
- (805) 893-3062