Finding La Yarda is an immersive multimedia art experience recreating a room from La Yarda, the housing unit built for Mexican American railroad workers in Lawrence, Kansas from 1920-51. Using film, sound, art, and digital storytelling practices, Finding La Yarda brings oral history to life by taking audiences on a cultural journey through time and place. Contributing Artists include Justin Favela, Ann Dean, Jonathan Christensen Caballero, Brenna Buchanan Young, Jeremy Rockwell, Peter Jasso, and Marlo Angell.
A creative team of artists has worked in close collaboration with former La Yarda residents and their descendants to manifest this project. The installation uses experiential tools to create an artistically rendered living space from the La Yarda apartments. From brick facades to a recreated garden and interior kitchen, tactile set pieces add a physical dimension to the housing unit that until now has only been visible through photographs and paintings.
Design Architect Brenna Buchanan Young created floor plans and blueprints for this work. Artist Jeremy Rockwell built the structure on a life-size scale.
Former Ceramics Artist-in-Residence Jonathan Christensen Caballero’s ceramic sculptures were molded from the families’ hands, faces, and feet. They provide isolated moments for participants to reflect on.
Mixed media artist Justin Favela has created a wall-length mural and tree using piñata inspired materials. The mural takes inspiration from the impressionistic childhood memories of the residents and the tree will be created through a hands-on collaborative process with the community.
To take the impact of this project outside of the Arts Center walls, photographic portraits of the living residents of La Yarda taken by photographer Ann Dean will be displayed on the Lawrence Loop at 8th and Delaware. These large-scale images will highlight the contributions of the Mexican American community in Lawrence and reach people outside of traditional gallery spaces.
Television screens mounted in window sills and table tops reveal fleeting moments and memories through the medium of experimental film created by Marlo Angell and Peter Jasso.
Through these elements, attendees will experience the domestic atmosphere, emotional connections, cultural celebrations, and environmental struggles that took place both within and outside the walls of La Yarda.
INSIGHT Art Talk | September 16, 7 pm
Join us for an evening with the Finding La Yarda team of artists as they discuss the process and history of the Finding La Yarda installation!
This project is produced by the Lawrence Arts Center by a sub-award from Stories for All: A Digital Storytelling Project for the Twenty-First Century, an initiative hosted by the Hall Center for the Humanities in partnership with the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas and supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Justin Favela’s participation is made possible by visiting artist grant support from the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission.
