Body, Border & Collective Care Panel

How can creative practice restore dignity to the physical body in a world designed to render people invisible? Join artists and cultural workers Jasmin Cardenas, Érika Ordosgoitti, and Nazafarin Lotfi, in a conversation moderated by Susan Gzesh, as they explore the intersection of community arts, sanctuary, and civic action. Moving from the intimate spaces of internal community healing out into the broad public landscape of Chicago, this program examines how art functions not as a passive commodity, but as a vital tool for survival, belonging, and policy change. From homemade meals shared over life stories to street-level theater that humanizes labor, community-anchored art provides a powerful refuge against systemic isolation. In this dynamic panel, featured artists share how their ground-level work across Chicago transforms trauma, absence, and institutional indifference into radical acts of solidarity and civic power. Featured Projects & Bios Érika Ordosgoitti | The Venezuelan Migration Living Archive gathers Venezuelan immigrants over home-cooked meals to record, preserve, and center their life stories. By bringing these genuine testimonies to the public facade of the art center through audiovisual intervention, the project challenges political rhetoric and transforms individual migration journeys into a collective historical testimony. Nazafarin Lotfi | Hamrah Arts Club Founded by artist and activist Nazafarin Lotfi, Hamrah (meaning “fellow traveler” in Farsi) is a creative mentorship program for youth with refugee status. Using art-making to explore belonging and utopian alternatives, the program fosters deep solidarity and a strong network of support among refugee, asylum-seeking, and immigrant youth navigating Chicago. Jasmin Cardenas | WorkersTEATRO An independent Chicago ensemble of working people, WorkersTEATRO collaborates with theater director Jasmin Cardenas and worker organizer Isaura Martinez. By using theater and storytelling to explore lived experiences of workplace discrimination and exploitation, the group uses creative expression as a direct tool for education, liberation, and labor policy change. Moderated by Susan Gzesh, Instructional Professor at the University of Chicago and former Executive Director of the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights. A longtime human rights lawyer, advocate, and educator, Prof. Gzesh integrates visual arts and film into human rights education and has worked for decades on migration policy, cross-border advocacy, and civil rights in Chicago and internationally.