Public Art as Resistance is an ongoing project by San Jose State’s College of Humanities and Arts that aims to highlight the history of public art in downtown San Jose.
The project was competitively selected for the California Humanities Council quick grant through the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Katherine Harris, director of public programming for the College of Humanities and Arts, and Alena Sauzade, director and collections manager at SJSU’s Natalie and James Thompson Gallery, created the walking tour.
“Our idea was to incorporate students' ideas, languages, identities and their own community connections into the walking tour itself,” Harris said. “Every piece of artwork is a representation of the major communities, both ethnic and cultural, that surround SJSU.”
The walking tour starts at the Cesar Chavez Monument on SJSU’s campus, across from the Student Union.
Art history and visual culture master’s student Lou Jimenez is a tour guide for Public Art as Resistance and offers interactive bike tours.
Jimenez said her interactions with people who view the project is her favorite part of conducting these tours.
“When we did the tour for the San Jose Museum community and its members, I had a good conversation with an individual about cultural economy,” Jimenez said. “I mentioned that artists are outsourced when money should be invested in local artists here. Her feedback made me focus my efforts on this more since nobody really talks about it.”
The Arch of Dignity, Equality, and Justice was created for the university by Chicana artist Judy Baca in 2008.
The arch is based on a Mayan corbelled arch design with Spanish and indigenous roots and features mosaic tile murals, according to a SJSU webpage.
Sauzade said Baca envisioned that SJSU students and faculty would feel empowered as we walk through the Arch and those who take a walking tour are asked to do the same.
The structure commemorates Cesar Chavez, a Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist, and his commitment for farm workers’ rights.
The exterior pillars display Dolores Huerta, Chavez’ co-founder of the United Farm Workers labor union, and Mahatma Gandhi, who influenced the union with his nonviolence philosophy, according to the same SJSU website,
The top of the arch is the symbol of the United Farm Workers Union: the eagle.
Below it, on opposite pillars, there are a male and female farm worker from the Salinas Valley while the interior is a portrait of Chavez, the Virgin of Guadalupe and a skull symbolizing the deaths of farm workers because of harsh working conditions, according to the same SJSU webpage.
Sauzade said these exhibitions reflect the cultural diversity at San Jose State.
She said the Arch of Dignity, Equality, and Justice is one of the most significant pieces of art in the tour.
“Not only is it a beautiful example of a mosaic piece and a large scale public art sculpture, I just find it fascinating how it talks about the work of nonviolent protesters in a narrative form,” Sauzade said. “It utilizes mosaics in a way that is accessible to students but it also serves as a gesture of empowerment. I think that physical experience is really special and powerful.”
Sauzade said she selected these pieces for the route with her co-organizers. She said one of the pieces they included was the Japanese-American Internment Memorial on 300 S. First Street.
She said it was created by Ruth Asawa in 1994 who spent four years in a Japanese internment camp based in Rohwer, Arkansas with her family.
The large bronze sculpture shows the “key aspects of the Japanese-American experience, before and after WWII with a central focus on the experience of the incarcerated Japanese Americans during the war,” according to a SJSU webpage.
Its mural shows heavily armed soldiers representing the war, combined with the community and labor force at the internment camps, according to the same SJSU webpage.
Sauzade said it is a reminder for us to acknowledge California’s dark history and how the culture and lives of Japanese-Americans flourished before and after this time.
“In terms of history, it's so easy for us to kind of turn the page and pretend it never happened,” Sauzade said. “And that's something that the federal government very much did, so placing that work in front of the federal government building is a gesture of resistance.”
Harris said the context behind art pieces like these are often overlooked, and she said she would love to see a QR code at every form of art so that we can learn more about it.
“As a resident of San Jose and a longtime faculty member at San Jose State, [public art] offers me a sense of beauty in the middle of an urban environment,” Harris said. “It also allows me to ruminate on that particular piece of artwork and who it's about and relate to it in ways that maybe I haven't done before.”
Public Art as Resistance is scheduled to open the tours again in March.
