Lessons From a Children's Art Teacher

"As some of the hundreds of children at ICE's horrific Dilley detention center in Texasshare testimonies this week, I can't stop thinking about one clay workshop she organized for children who had recently migrated from Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. They immediately associated the clay with the dangerous crossing through the jungle to reach the United States. As an educator, Palma followed their lead and allowed the clay to become a medium for working, kneading, and processing memory."

""When I stopped and studied the way children were using their mouths, I was mesmerized," writes Palma, whose work beautifully explores language, lineage, and memory, often through the use of her own body and mouth. She observed that bites, sounds, licks, and tastings were her students' way of processing and interacting with their surroundings in a way language cannot. It struck her as a principle she could borrow as an artist: "I took that intimacy and revelation with me and brought it into my art.""

Mónica Palma is a Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based artist and educator who teaches art to young children, including recent migrants. A clay workshop with children from Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador connected the material to the dangerous jungle crossing to the United States. Palma allowed clay to become a medium for working, kneading, and processing memory, honoring both harrowing experiences and cultivated fantasy and joy. Observing children's use of mouths—bites, sounds, licks, and tastings—revealed nonverbal ways of processing surroundings and language limits. Palma incorporated that intimacy and revelation into her art practice, foregrounding language, lineage, memory, and bodily expression.

Read at Hyperallergic