Art encourages understanding

By Victoria Winkleman

Three artworks debut this fall in Dallas as the first iteration of Healing Pieces: Offerings of Art, Expression and Nature, a collaborative multi-year arts and engagement initiative led by SMU Meadows School of the Arts’ Ignite/Arts Dallas program with myriad partner organizations and individuals.

 Healing Pieces (healingpieces.art) is specifically interested in how architecture, green space, urban planning and community development can lead to transformation of the city. It seeks to illustrate how Dallas and its communities can enter conversations that encourage understanding and stimulate meaningful change across race, culture, geography, criminal and environmental justice reform and urbanism.

 The three works, each at a different site, are Black Power Naps Park/Parque Siestas Negras by Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, the augmented reality experience Project Witness in West Dallas and the 2021 Healing Pieces Action Calendar by RISO BAR. All were designed in consideration of safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Black Power Naps and Project Witness will be available for public viewing from Oct. 24 through Dec.10. In addition, an online symposium is planned for Dec. 8.

Curated by Ignite/Arts Dallas Director Clyde Valentín and SMU Pollock Gallery Director Sofia Bastidas Vivar, Black Power Naps Park/Parque Siestas Negras is an interactive multi-sensory outdoor installation at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park that offers rest as a form of reparation. “It invites visitors to lounge, reclaim idleness and consider the power and energy that has been exhausted from those who are Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC),” said Acosta and Sosa. “It also looks at historical records documenting the deliberate fragmentation of restorative sleep patterns to subjugate enslaved people.” Black Power Naps has been presented in cities such as Miami and Madrid; this is its first outdoor exhibition. The installation features hammocks and mounds of grass in yonic shapes that welcome multiple resting bodies amid a serene soundscape of wind chimes and a soothing playlist. The exhibit is free and open to the public by appointment every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday between 

3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sweet Pass Sculpture Park is located at 402 Fabrication Street in West Dallas. To make an appointment, contact Everton Melo, [email protected] or 214-768-4439. 

Project Witness is a free augmented reality experience created earlier this year by the national Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth with Google and YouTube to build awareness of the conditions of childhood incarceration. Accessible via smartphone at six locations around W. Commerce Street and Riverfront Blvd. near the Dallas County Criminal Court and North Tower Detention Facility, it depicts the extreme forms of punishment imposed on incarcerated children in the U.S. through the personal stories of Johnny Perez, Xavier McElrath-Bey, Hernán Carvete Martinez, Jarrett Harper, Laura Berry and Alyssa Beck. Attendees must download Google Lens to scan quotations and engage in the interactive experience as they walk the area abutting the Trinity River, which itself faces pending urban transformation. Project Witness was curated by clemency reform advocate Jason Hernandez. For more details on how to experience Project Witness, visit https://bit.ly/3dsYFNI. For more information on the national project, visit fairsentencingofyouth.org/project-witness.

 The 2021 Healing Pieces Action Calendar, from publishing initiative RISO BAR, will function as both a learning tool and a next-steps methodology for Healing Pieces. Curated by Bastidas Vivar, the calendar features literary and visual artwork by formerly and currently imprisoned people along with a historical understanding of the Texas criminal justice system, images of the Trinity River from the time of the indigenous Caddo people, and new developments taking place around the river linked to pertinent Dallas City Council meeting dates. The calendar will be available in December via risobar.net, and all proceeds will benefit Miles of Freedom, a Dallas-based nonprofit that helps newly released prisoners get back on their feet.

 Healing Pieces will also feature a symposium with conversations and screenings produced in collaboration with the Imagining Freedom Institute, a Dallas-based organization that provides a variety of consultation services on issues of equity and social justice. The symposium will be held Tuesday, Dec. 8, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; details on the program will be posted soon at healingpieces.art.

Ignite/Arts Dallas leads Healing Pieces in collaboration with American Indian Heritage Day in Texas, bcWorkshop, Big Thought, Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, Deep Vellum, HR&A Associates, Jason Hernandez, The Imagining Freedom Institute, Miles of Freedom, the Pollock Gallery at SMU, Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, RISO BAR and Unlocking Doors.