Women are the Spaces - April 2023

Exhibition curated by students of ARTH 270, Winter 2023
Olivia Vidmar
Marcela Torres Molano

Love is the seed
Pain is the water
Resistance is the soil
Care is the sun
ommunity is the tree
Latin America is the forest

The strength of their collectiveness is so powerful we can see it from the North
We can feel it from the North
We can hear it from the North
We learn from it in the North

Because it’s the madres
The hijas
The hermanas
The tías
The vecinas
The amigas
The maestras
The mujeres
The reason why the fire is growing
That hope is intact
That fear is weakened

Women are weavers of the network of life
Women are the architects of resilience
Women are the spaces

This class was only possible because of those women, because of their practices of SentirPensar their communitarian ways of life, and their art
Gracias maestras

Written by Marcela Torres Molano

Students Positionality Statement
The research displayed within this exhibition is informed by our study of SentirPensar practices, Communitarian Feminism, territory and general engagement with the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, Campesinas and all women living and working within Abya Yala (Latin America). These worldviews challenge the hegemonic thinking often taught in the context of Western academic institutions and practiced within systems of power. Our studies have encouraged us to broaden our understanding of cultural practices, methods of production, and community building; the results of this learning journey have materialized in this display.

Partaking in this class exhibition with many of us approaching this work from varied backgrounds, biases and beliefs, we acknowledge our positionalities and privilege as students within a colonial institution in so-called North America. Thus, we engage with these subjects at a distance that can give way to the utmost accuracy.

These maquettes result from such engagement and attempt to reflect on how spaces and architecture influence relationality between individuals, social circles, and communities at large. However, due to our distance from these subjects, we cannot fully know the nuances of how SentirPensar authentically operates within their communities. We lack a complete understanding of how they operate within their spaces. Furthermore, much of our research was also conducted online and through sources that could be vetted by an academic institution, therefore missing the nuanced personal engagement with these spaces and the communities they serve.

To remedy this within the context of our class, we attempt to posit care and compassion in our approach by centring the stories and voices of these women and using the SentirPensar epistemology as a gesture of respect and appreciation that does not conform to hegemonic academic notions of proving knowledge. Instead, we accept the lived experiences of these women as truth and engage with their work from this framework.

Written by Kate Bursey and Xaviera Meza-Wong for ARTH 270 - Women Architects in Latin America “Women are the Spaces.”