William Estrada: Communal Power

It was a complete honor and privilege to chat with my friend, mentor, and comrade, William Estrada. William is an artist, educator, and community organizer. His teaching and art making practice focus on addressing inequity, migration, and cultural recognition in historically marginalized communities. He is a faculty member at the UIC School of Art and Art History and a Teaching Artist at Telpochcalli Elementary School. William is currently engaging in collaborative work with the Mobilize Creative Collaborative, Chicago ACT Collective, and Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative.

William: I mean, obviously the portraits are gorgeous. What prompted all this? 

Irina: Thanks for asking. When I was a young person, I was really interested in portraiture. When I was in high school, I would sit down with people and paint them all the time. That was my thing. Then as I got politicized and there became this rift between my art practice and my organizing, I moved into more community-based work and stepped back from making as much. I started teaching, organizing, facilitating, producing, and curating.

But since the pandemic started, I’ve really been missing one on one connection. So it occurred to me, maybe it's a good time to kind of dip back into portraiture and get to talk to people that I really love and admire. It's just been like such a privilege to connect with people and hear how folks are doing right now. 

So on that note, how are you? How has this time been for you?

William: You know, it's been a bit of a roller coaster. There's been amazing days and then other days where it's just like, questioning what I contribute, whether I contribute enough, you know, whether I'm contributing anything? It's like, why am I even doing this? 

Teresita, my wife, is a nurse at the VA, so we've been trying to figure out how to support her through her anxiety and mental health. And try to establish structure for Ty and Ilan, who are 14 and 17 year olds. We’ve been playing a lot of video games and watching a lot of movies as a family, just to build in some structured family time. 

I’m trying to figure out a space to reconnect with my students. Trying to figure out how we can just be present with each other, hang out, and make art. I think about the importance of art making in these times. The fact that really it's more about our presence with each other, you know? And, and the community that we want to build for.

You know, because like a lot of the work is, it is about contact with others. We're kind of going through these phases as a state, but also like trying to figure out what is the Mobile Street Art Cart, or what is the Family Portraits Project, or any community project, like how is it going to be different now that, you know, we go back?

So it's been, it's been interesting trying to figure it out. I’m also thinking about how to support work that's already happening instead of me trying to be like, I should start this new thing. 

Irina: I can definitely relate to so much of what you're sharing. The roller coaster of daily emotions of like, what is my life even? How to find purpose and meaning in this moment as a community-based artist. I'm curious, because you're someone that does so much relational work, what has that the pandemic brought up for you emotionally or creatively?

William: I knew that being out in the world with others brought happiness, right? Like, quite literally. 

Irina: I see you, you're out there all the time! 

William: You know, it really brings me happiness. Like it fills me up and inspires me to do a bunch of other stuff too, right? Both in teaching and working with community members. This pandemic has definitely amplified my acknowledgement of that; if it wasn't for the people, I don't think I would teach.

I’m realizing that I don’t really don't hang out with people when it isn't work related. I'm having a really, really hard time right now, because I'm just like, wait a minute… all the folks that I know are through work. It's not like, I'm gonna go have dinner with so and so, or I'm gonna have a picnic – outside of folks in the collective that we go camping with – it's still very much tied to work. 

So that's one conversation that I've been having with Teresita, and just thinking about how we need to go to people's homes more, and people need to come to our home more, trying to create more of those spaces. You know, so I started creating these YouTube read-alouds in Spanish, but I’m also thinking about what it means for, like, this brown cis male to be vulnerable on camera and to share my feelings and things that I'm afraid of.

So it's been really nice to have people reach out to me via social media and email letting me know how much these videos mean to them and their students. Saying things like, “I didn't realize how much I love being read to.”

I’ve been thinking about just the way information is disseminated in our communities. I was thinking, what would it look like if we did workshops and shadow puppets, you know? 

Irina: Yes! 

William: Like stage, large shadow puppet screens. I wanted to do a workshop in Little Village Park. I built the structure and figured out how to do shadow puppet workshops. And then, once the sun sets, turning on lights and, and playing, right? Like inviting adults, kids, and thinking about how we can generate these short plays based on things that are going on in the neighborhood, you know? 

Irina: Yes! I love this! 

William: Obviously, I’d like to talk to and collaborate with other theater folks and puppeteers, folks like Jasmine Cardenas who does amazing Theater of the Oppressed work all over the country. It would be cool to think about how this could look in different neighborhoods across the city, and other spaces, other cities.

But then I’m thinking, what should our story be about? What's happening in the neighborhood that we should make a story about? What's the problem? How should it be resolved? Can we reimagine solutions? 

Irina: I think this is brilliant because we've been thinking in the parks of how we do programming at this time. We're not trying to disinfect a million paintbrushes. We need to be doing things with our bodies, right? Theater is a great solution to that!

William: You know Irina, this is making me think about how the arts are being viewed right now and the fact that there's a big push for reading and writing. How do we support our growth as humans and the importance of different ways of problem solving? The importance of using art as a tool for healing, you know? And, processing like these complex roller coaster of emotions that we're feeling, right?

Irina: This is a perfect transition to the question I've been asking everybody, which is Grace Lee Boggs’ question, what time is it on the clock of the world? 

William: I think this is a sunrise, you know? This is the moment where, where the sun is coming, we're in all of awe of the things that we were afraid of, our inability to sleep or, or just sleeping too much, like waking up to that like grogginess of like, trying to prepare ourselves to like face the new day, you know?

It’s time to create change and support folks that are in your life.

Irina: I love that. The sunrise. What do you think this time has to teach us?

William: I think it's definitely a reminder. It's a reminder that all the things that we were told couldn't happen can, both good and bad, right? Systems that are in place are fragile. They're also meant to serve a very small group of people and that small group of people are heavily reliant on the rest of us to keep that system propped up for them.

I’m really just thinking about communal power and organizing in our communities, and reimagining these power structures.

People are noticing where policing is happening and where it isn't. Doing side by side comparisons, right, or like, you know, parks on the north side and parks on the south side, right?

And who's allowed to kind of wander around the park without masks and… and where the police are enforcing rules and where they aren't, where people are given the benefit of the doubt. 

So that’s what I’m thinking about and noticing.

Irina: Thank you so much, William. Thank you. I really appreciate your time and your wisdom and you're just giving me so much inspiration.

William: Oh, thank you so much, Irina. I didn't realize how much I needed this, too, so. Thank you. Bye, take care.