Adriana Katzew’s Keynote at MassURC 2022 Highlights Research's Role in Her Creative Work
By Mahidhar Sai Lakkavaram
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"Research allows me to tell these little stories, these snippets, to really be able to understand better who we are and how complex we are. There are many stories that shape us and we need to do that research to understand them."
Adriana Katzew, professor and director of graduate programs in art education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, was the keynote speaker for the 2022 Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference (Mass URC), a state-wide research symposium managed by Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to serve all 28 public undergraduate schools of the Commonwealth. Addressing the gathering virtually, Katzew described her journey exploring the intersection of identity and immigration within art, and the role research has played as she has navigated these concepts.
Katzew began her speech by providing context to her start with research and its crossover with her artistic endeavors. She felt that her own individual context is what shaped her and was important for the viewers to know so they can understand the role research plays in her life.
After providing this context, she explained that it wasn’t until 2006 that she saw her research and art come together for the first time. While working in Vermont, she saw the plight of migrant workers living on dairy farms, as they were dependent on their employers for travel since Vermont was a very isolated place and they were fearful of being targeted by US Immigration officers. As such, Katzew thoroughly researched this situation and found documentation of these workers in the past. Using stills from this documentation, she created an art piece where she photoshopped the people from these images onto glass milk bottles from Vermont dairies to share their stories.
“That was the first time I brought my own research practice and my art practice together, to unearth the stories of Mexican migrant workers,” she said.
The second time she brought these two fields together was in the Bea Project. After being gifted numerous paraphernalia of a woman named Bea from one of her friends, Katzew was intrigued by Bea and her story, and wanted to know more about her life. She started using these objects to construct a timeline of Bea’s life and went through numerous historical archives to find out more. In the end, she created an art piece that helped her move Bea’s image from the background to the foreground, and tell her story.
While working on the Bea Project, another question popped into Katzew’s head: “When I was doing the research about Bea, what really came to mind is that I was spending all this time researching this woman’s history, then I thought, what about my family’s history? Why am I not spending time doing that?”
This led her to investigate her grandparents’ stories and their mix of Jewish and Mexican heritage, and what this looked like in the larger picture. She started researching about Jewish immigration into Mexico and tried to imagine what life was like at that period as she was sifting through her grandparents’ heirlooms.
"Very interesting. I never thought art and photography could be used to reveal so much about family history. Makes me want to dive into my own family's history,” said Noemi Meriaux, a conference attendee.
Katzew explained, “Research allows me to tell these little stories, these snippets, to really be able to understand better who we are and how complex we are. There are many stories that shape us and we need to do that research to understand them.”
“I’m not just trying to make aesthetic pieces, but I’m trying to make pieces that have meaning to me and that hopefully will have meaning to others,” she explained.
Katzew concluded, “My hope for [you] undergraduates is [that you] find places that you are connected to, that you find a connection, that you find a passion, and that you use other disciplines, other subject areas to inform you, so that you can tell and unearth the stories that are important for you to tell.”
View the full keynote on the MassURC YouTube channel.