About Me
Having moved often during my childhood, I was fortunate to experience diverse artwork and teaching styles in my everyday life. I would lie on the floor at home in Kuwait, tracing woven, intricate, patterned carpets, or run my hands along the colorful beadwork at market stalls in Nigeria. In Indonesia, I remember engaging in wayang (shadow puppet) and batik (wax fabric resist) school lessons, and in Angola, I saw the vibrant reds, whites, yellows, and blacks of the flag so often that they come to my mind more often than any Mondrian painting. And of course, in Chicago, I experienced what being an artist, student, and teacher in a classroom felt like.
Art is something everyone has their own different definition of. As an artist and a student, I would have defined art as a vehicle of communication, capable of surpassing any language, and born with the conscious thought of an artist. Now, after being in a classroom as an educator, I see art in so many more places than on a canvas or in a studio. It is when students are engaged and excited by a lesson that I was nervous to teach. It is when a high school student begrudgingly admits they gradually started enjoying my lessons. It is when a student jokingly gifted me a large PayDay bar after learning I was allergic to peanuts (it was a touching moment, I swear).
I believe in bringing the world into the classroom, where students can experience the story and visuals of other cultures and individuals, while developing the skillset to express their own. I always aim to create curriculum that values student voices, meeting them where they are at, and encouraging them to apply their personal interests in artmaking.
I believe that teaching and learning are reciprocal acts: teachers never stop being students, and students are more than capable of teaching and leading. Above anything else, I believe that everybody has the capability to dream and create.
Instagram: @yuyuvi.art
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