Author: Itzel Basualdo

Lost at SAIC: A Mini-Memoir

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And so 2018 was off to a bang. Three different bangs. Bang. Bang. Bang. I will enumerate them below. A poetry workshop (I know I claimed to be a poet when joining the MFA Years community, but I might’ve lied about that). A writing class with a focus on incorporating programming languages and electronic elements in poetics. A medium-format film photography class. The premise of these, individually, was initially exciting. I figured I was maximizing the interdisciplinary nature of my program and gearing it towards my needs, my very disparate and incoherent needs. My “texts” (I hid my “poems” of the past under the pretense of calling them “texts” to avoid the scrutiny that may have come with calling them poems) needed some maturing, as did I, and so I figured this diverse curriculum I’d set up for myself was going to help me do that and become an adult. Also to help me evolve into a mature artist, I thought I could cover the more experimental desires of my practice by taking a class …

My Two Cents

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I’ve been hesitating with this post for a while because I don’t think I still quite know how to appropriately articulate what I’ve been feeling, but here it goes. Maybe it’s because these are the narratives I’ve been taught as a woman of color, even in my own household — stay quiet and be grateful. But I am grateful, and we’ve been shushed for too long. These are my very brief two cents. Cent 1: Having grown up in Miami — a minority-majority, strange placewhere Spanglish reigns as the official/unofficial language of the city — my experiences in predominantly white circles had been limited. Business signs are in Spanish. I speak to my parents in Spanish. For seven words, you toss in three in Spanish. It’s arguably fair to call Miami the capital of Latin America. But despite having grown up wishing Celia Cruz was my celebrity grandma, I’d spent most of my life reading predominantly white literature. I learned, early on, that names like my own were nowhere to be found in books. Much …

Dazed and confused in the age of the MFA

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Image: Mike Boening Some things you should know about me: The first time I left Miami I was 19. And I believed so then, with extreme certainty, that leaving the 305 was written in the stars for me. It was absolutely meant to be. And in retrospect, it was for good. I came back a year later with lots of great life experience under my belt: I blacked out from drinking whiskey, I blacked out from too much sangria, I made art that I was proud of at the time, and managed to overcome a depression I had been struggling with for almost two years. Some additional things you should know about me: The second time I left Miami was a month ago, and I’m still trying to figure out if it was for good. Partly because of how much I’m going to be in the hole after this, which is cause for concern, but also because I’ve just begun my graduate career at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The “MFA in …