On Feb. 19 at 6 p.m., students will have the opportunity to hear from Mark Menjívar, a San Antonio-based artist whose work centers on community, migration and collective experience. Menjívar will visit campus to give a lecture on his recent participation in the “We Are All Migrants” art exhibit, as well as give a variety of workshops focused on art students at Weber State University.
Menjívar is an associate professor in the Interdisciplinary School for Engagement at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he is in his first year after spending a decade teaching at Texas State University. He also serves as associate director of UTSA Arts, the university’s hub for creative activity, where he helps connect the university with surrounding communities.
His teaching and artistic practice are shaped by interdisciplinary learning. With an undergraduate degree in social work and a graduate degree in art, Menjívar emphasizes the value of learning across disciplines. “With interdisciplinary, the way that I see it is that we’re all learning from each other and sharing our different approaches and tools and we may utilize them in our own ways.”
Central to Menjívar’s work is social practice art, which prioritizes collaboration and participation over traditional studio-based methods. “One of the things I’ve always tried to do is make work with communities and with people, not about communities or about people,” he said.
During his artist talk, Menjívar will share projects created in collaboration with communities across the United States, while also connecting them to his work currently on display in the gallery. A key focus of the lecture is migration, a theme that has shaped his work for nearly two decades.
One featured project includes photographs of handwritten prayer request cards written by individuals migrating through San Antonio. The cards are shared anonymously and collected with community permission.
“If you really want to know what’s going on in someone’s mind and heart, seeing what their prayer requests are can give us insight into that,” Menjívar said.
Rather than highlighting individual stories, the project emphasizes shared experience.
“It’s a beautiful way of looking at how we’re feeling or what we’re dealing with collectively, as opposed to just individually,” he said. “People are coming together and saying, ‘Yes, we want these to be made public so people can know who we are.’”
Migration is also personal to Menjívar. His father is from El Salvador, his mother from Puerto Rico and he spent part of his childhood living in Central America. Living in Texas, just hours from the border, continues to influence his perspective and practice.
