This Week as an Artivist 4/2/16: Frida Kahlo, SLC Utah, 50 Push-Up Challenge


Frida Kahlo is my muse (0:00-1:26) (2:31-3:00)
NY Times review of 1992 Frida Kahlo documentary: http://nyti.ms/1SJonfY
University of Utah College of Social Work, Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah (1:24-3:15)
Museum of Tolerance 3/31/16 (3:17-4:48)
Venmo App = racist? (4:48-5:54)
50 Push-up challenge (5:55-6:17) http://bit.ly/20234gp
What are YOUR goals? (6:20-7:09)

Twitter: @fanshen @onedropoflove
Instagram: @onedropoflove

TRANSCRIPT:
So, do you know who Frida Kahlo is? I saw a documentary of Frida Kahlo when I was teaching Spanish to students in the 90s. I was teaching in a high school and my Supervising Teacher recommended that I show my students a documentary about Frida Kahlo, and I had known about her a little bit, I had probably seen her art but I didn’t know a whole lot about her life and I watched this documentary – I mean talking about the original Artivist – I mean not THE original because there have been other Artivists in the world and before her, but in so many ways her work and who she was as a person represents so much of what I want to be. Her work is both deeply personal, but also it talks about the power that women have when we share all of who we are, even when that feels very personal and you start to realize that you have connections to other people by sharing it and I love her. And this summer I was in Mexico and I found this bag, and I was like, “Yes. This is my bag.” And she just inspires me so whenever I travel to do the show I take this bag with me.

So I took this bag with me to our show at the University of Utah, which we did on Tuesday. And we had an incredible time. So the show was the closing act of the 10th anniversary of the University of Utah’s College of Social Work Social Justice series. This is put on by this incredible woman teacher, Educator, powerful woman there named Irene Ota. She invited Chandra and me to see her class and she’s doing a class social justice advocacy for social workers, and they’re creating toolkits for social justice advocacy and all of their projects were incredible. One woman is doing a support group for Transracially Adopted kids in Salt Lake City. Another woman is creating a website for parents to know their rights, the educational rights for themselves and for their children. They were just so great and amazing and inspiring! It was wonderful.

And then the best part is that then Irene took us out to dinner – we had dinner with some of the students and faculty before the show – the night before the show. And we’re walking up to dinner and Chandra goes, “Oh! Fanshen! Look at the name of this restaurant we’re going to!” and the name of the restaurant is ‘Frida Bistro’ and I got this gorgeous t-shirt from Irene – thank you Irene! That is at Frida Bistro in Salt Lake City, Utah, which was just a wonderful restaurant, the food was great and we were sitting there blessed by Frida herself.

I got to speak with quite a few people after the show and they were really moved and had lots of follow up questions, and I’m so proud that we were able to do the show there. So if any of you are watching from the University of Utah – thank you for having us – it was really inspiring.

OK this morning I did the show at the Museum of Tolerance here in Los Angeles. And it was so nice to go from – you know that I had big audiences, 1500 students a week ago and then Utah a really big stage, and then here it seats about 115 people or so, but generally these are smaller groups so probably about 35 or 40 people and I’m really up close to them and it makes a difference – it’s a very different feeling of the staging, but it’s really nice because it’s intimate and I can literally look right into people’s faces and interact with them directly. So it’s always nice to be back at the Museum, and also one woman who came today has seen the show there before, and she said, “You know I saw some new things here today,” so that was great – so she’s noticing that I’m making changes.

Now also by the way we have two new slides. So I talked a little bit about pacing last week, and how I’m looking at places to pick up the pacing, but I also realized that there’s a slide that can help situate the audience a little bit more when my father and I are both traveling I’m paralleling our trips to Africa together, so I’ve included a slide of when my father went to the Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Now interestingly, I’m using Venmo – Venmo is an app that you can use to pay people quickly. I asked my graphic designer Heather Fipps (who’s amazing – thank you Heather!) – I asked her to create a new slide and when I paid her on Venmo you write a little note like a memo on a check and I wrote “ODOL (One Drop of Love) Slide Sudan Ethiopia.” Well they put a flag on the payment and I just got an email from Venmo telling me they had to investigate my payment and they needed to know exactly what this payment was for, since I had used the words ‘Sudan’ and ‘Ethiopia.’ Interesting. Racist? I don’t what to say. All I can think of is, “My God, if you are Sudanese or Ethiopian, what life must be like for you now. And I am sorry for people who prejudge you – not that I have to apologize for what they do, but I’m sorry for what you have to go through.

OK this week I’m going to do a physical goal. A friend of mine posted on Facebook a 50 Push-up Challenge and so it takes you through – you start out with 5 push-ups then you move on to 10 and you get rest breaks and then you move on to 12, and then you keep moving on and you do 50 push-ups eventually! So that’s my goal.

How about you? What are your goals? Are you writing? Are you performing? Are you workshopping your work? Are you sharing your work with other people? Are you sharing your story? Someone said today, after the Museum show, “Y’know, your story is incredible,” and I said I didn’t know that until I started sharing it with people. YOUR story is incredible too. You just gotta get it out there – and find out about your parents’ stories, and their parents’ stories and it’s so important to hear someone else’s narrative, so that we are not stuck in what we believe they are just based on what we see on the outside. OK. Thank you for watching #ThisWeekasanArtivist. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye bye!