Silvia Gonzalez

Mitos | Memory
mixed media photography
11 x 14 in.

Silvia Gonzalez is a Xicana artist in Chicago with experience in both teaching and organizing Arts Educational programming. Her visual, sound experimentation, writing, and performance work are the result of navigating nostalgia, accessing political, social and personal history, as in addition to self- preservation and wellness through her work. Gonzalez has created zines and curated workshops to address structures of power, imagination, play, confinement, and freedom. Collaborative justice based projects include work with local art groups such as the Chicago ACT (Artist Creating Transformation) collective and the 96 Acres Project, led by the Artist Maria Gaspar. She is the organizer for the group POC (People of Color) which connects artists of color from across Chicago to resources and each other.

Silvia Gonzalez went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received degrees in Photography and another in Art Education. She has a master’s from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she wrote a thesis on the work done with The 96 Acres Project describing methodologies for engaging radical possibility frameworks with young people. Her action based research engaged community knowledge and grassroots justice work in the classroom where young people were encouraged to consider the ways in which artistic intervention, storytelling, and education become multiple and interconnected points for liberatory departure.

Her teaching and community arts-based programming include workshops for spaces such as Woman Made Gallery 20 Neighborhoods Project in Albany Park’s Centro Autonomo, The Jane Addams Hull House for Cities of Peace, Northwestern Academy, The Art Institute’s Ryan Education Teacher Programs, Street Level Youth Media, Gallery 400, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, and as a full-time educator in Chicago’s public and private school settings.

© Silvia Gonzalez