Congratulations 2021 PandemiDiarios on the Border awardees

April 7, 2021

Twenty-one artists and creatives have been awarded PandemiDiarios on the Border microgrants to produce creative works reflecting on human experience of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Twenty-one artists and creatives have been awarded PandemiDiarios on the Border microgrants to produce creative works reflecting on human experience of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Diverse awardees represent journalists, community activists, teachers, dancers, poets, painters, mothers and grandmothers. University of Arizona-affiliated awardees represent School of Journalism, School of Art, Arizona State Museum, Department of French and Italian, and Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Themes among proposed projects emerged as isolation and connection, identity, sense of place, and resilience.

Artists employ diverse media and methods in their creative interpretations. As examples, retired UArizona faculty member Dr. Dolores Rivas Bahti is producing a collection of watercolor paintings and poetry, as a meditation on a year of lost loved ones. Nogales, Sonora, resident and social worker Bianca Valverde is creating a public installation of photographs and audio recordings to make visible the experience of unhoused drug users during the pandemic. Tohono O'odham grandmother Thomasa Rivas is creating traditional hu’uli grandmother dolls, which remind us that we are not alone in the presence of our ancestors.

The first round of PandemiDiarios microgrant projects, produced over the summer of 2020, similarly reflected and interpreted the human experience of the COVID-19 pandemic from underrepresented perspectives. The digital archive of all PandemiDiarios projects is held through partnership with University Libraries Special Collections Family and Community Archives. This “digital museum” will be freely available to the public in perpetuity.