Portrayed names. Cross-border and transgenerational drawn stories

Abstract

We present an artistic experience developed with students from the University of La Laguna in Tenerife (Spain) and pre-teen girls and boys from the Mid-Peninsula Boys & Girls Club in San Mateo, California (USA). The educators had a common interest in fostering culturally diverse experiences in artistic education while involving the educators’ educational contexts. We sought to generate life experiences through Art Education and with the individual’s identity playing the key role. Portrayed Names is a cross-border project that involved the participants in the territories, and with whom we initiated a communication based on artistic creations that portrayed the names of unknown persons. It was planned as a series of encounters in which we imagined a person’s appearance based on a name, and the names traveled to and from each participating territory. Each visual dialogue prompted thoughts, fostered the imagination, and sparked curiosity about the other person. All these creations generated ongoing conversations that composed a body of small paired stories and, as a whole, a broader narrative.