Voice to Vision (V2V) is a non-political art-making collaboration project started by Professor David Feinberg almost twenty years ago under the Art Department and Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. V2V provides creative expression through artistic collaboration to those who have experienced genocidal trauma, creating opportunities for storytellers (survivors) to make art. The historical narratives are then preserved and made publicly accessible for educational purposes.

In partnership with The State of Iberoamerican Studies Series: Human Rights and Theater, directed by Professor Luis A. Ramos-Garcia (Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies), and sponsored by a University of Minnesota Grand Challenges Research and the GPS Alliance, V2V traveled to Colombia in March and met with survivors of the fifty-year long internal armed conflict. In Bogotá, the Grand Challenges Project organized an art exhibition, and V2V spent one afternoon with Union Patriotica survivors, and the Mothers of Soacha, whose deceased children are known as “False Positives,” (see: Human Rights Watch Report 2017,) https://www.hrw.org/world-repo…/…/country-chapters/colombia…

 in a participatory drawing workshop. The mothers and UP survivors generously shared their stories with artists and students, who will in return, work with their drawings to create a series of responsive art objects.

We were the first U.S. citizens to visit the meeting place of the farmers of San Juan Sumapaz., who are protecting the environment of unique vegetation and the water supply at the lake in Parque Nacional Natural Sumapaz, which supplies the water for the city of Bogatá.

V2V made a powerpoint presentation at the conference, “Justicia Social a través del arte y el teatro en Latinoamérica y los EE.UU.”

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