I will be traveling to the deserts of Arizona this summer, dedicating my time primarily to assisting various Indigenous nations across the state and into Mexico with community arts projects.The image to the right is an example of a serigraph(screenprint) poster I made last Autumn for a convention on Human rights at the fedex global center at UNC.
One of my first projects entails facilitating a screen-printing/visual-art workshop with Hopi children in Flagstaff, Arizona while tending an herbal garden and helping to illustrate and screen-print a book of medicinal plants endemic to the region with a local artist. Beyond that, I plan to spend some time at Black Mesa, a site on the Dineh(Navajo) reservation, working at a media workshop.
In general, I will be offering my hands and eyes as a designer/illustrator/print-maker to facilitate community arts projects, but it in addition to that, I will be using a video camera to film some interviews with children and assist a local from the Tohono O'odham reservation with her efforts to compile footage and visual material for a documentary.
I want to spend this summer following a call to listen, as listening has been and will be my main approach guiding this search.
I hope to find out how to engage in dialogue with ongoing Indigenous struggles of resistance and to gain sensitivity regarding how to interact with Indigenous Nations through the arts given my current status as a cultural outsider.
Please feel free to get in touch for any questions, comments, or feedback you might have about any of my future dispatches. Dialogue revolving around issues that intersect with my efforts this summer is not only encouraged, but highly desired as a means of gleaning new perspective.
Thanks for caring,
Cameron Z
Email: CameronZarrabzadeh@riseup.net
Phone: 704.650.8741
