Claudia Bernardi

Artist Claudia Bernardi, internationally known for her work in the fields of visual art, human rights, and social justice, visits Notre Dame and South Bend for a weeklong residency that bridges campus and community. Through their arts in action research project, Cafecitos: Motherhood and Migration Stories of Trauma and Joy through Art, Literature, and Community Building, Vanesa Miseres and Vania Smith-Oka host Bernardi for a two-day community workshop with Latina women at La Casa de Amistad. Over the course of the workshop, community participants will create a portable canvas mural. Exhibition details will be announced soon.

In addition to meeting with students while on campus, Bernardi's residency also includes a public lecture about the community-based art projects she has facilitated in Latin America and the United States over the past thirty years with survivors of human rights violations.

Bernardi's return marks nearly 15 years since she served as the inaugural visiting artist invited to Notre Dame's Segura Arts Studio.

Credits

Claudia Bernardi

Over the past two decades, Claudia Bernardi's work has combined installation, sculpture, painting, and printmaking. She has also developed and facilitated community and collaborative art projects working with/ and in collaboration with communities that have suffered state terror, violence, forced exiles and who are victims of human rights violations.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bernardi lived through the Argentine military junta that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983. As a result of this system of repression over 30,000 Argentine citizens disappeared. The desaparecidos are the victims of the so-called “Dirty War”. She left Argentina in 1979. In 1984, a forensic anthropology team was established in Argentina to supply evidence of violations of human rights carried out against civilian populations. Bernardi participated, as mapmaker, and collaborated with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team in exhumations of mass graves in El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, and Ethiopia. Emerging from this experience, Bernardi recognized that art could be used to educate, elucidate, and articulate the communal memories of survivors of human rights atrocities.

Bernardi has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally, include at The International World Peace Center in Hiroshima, The Centre for Building Peace, Donegal, Northern Ireland, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Sonoma Museum of Contemporary Art, The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, The Tokushima Modern Art Museum, The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, DAH Teatar in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro, The University of Haifa, Israel, MACLA, Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley, Carl Gorman Museum at U.C. Davis, Tucson Museum of Art, and The Snite Museum at the University of Notre Dame.

Claudia Bernardi

Vanesa Miseres

Vanesa Miseres, Associate Professor of Spanish in Notre Dame's Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin America. Her research and teaching explore diverse topics such as travel writing, war literature, women writers, gender, cultural, and food studies. She is the author of Mujeres en tránsito: viaje, identidad y escritura en Sudamérica (1830–1910), which received the 2018 Alfredo Roggiano Prize for Latin American Literary Criticism from the IILI and an Honorable Mention for the Victoria Urbano Critical Monograph Prize from the Association of Gender & Sexuality Studies. An English version is forthcoming in spring 2027. She is also the author of Gender Battles: Latin American Women, War, and Feminism, a project supported by several grants, including a Humboldt Research Fellowship.

Vanesa Miseres

Vania Smith-Oka

Vania Smith-Oka, Professor in Notre Dame's Department of Anthropology, is a cultural and medical anthropologist who specializes on the effect of institutions (medical, economic, development) on the behavior and choices of marginalized populations, especially women. Her first book, haping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico (Vanderbilt, 2013), explored the impact of an economic development program on the reproductive lives and motherhood of indigenous women in the Huasteca region of Mexico. She also researched the doctor-patient relationship in a maternity ward in the city of Puebla and completed a book project (Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Obstetric Wards, Rutgers, 2021) on how skills, practices, and attitudes of medicine are transmitted to medical students.

Vania Smith-Oka

Funding & Support

This is a partner program of the 2027 Notre Dame Arts Biennial, supported with funding from the Notre Dame Arts Initiative.

This project is also made possible with funding from the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good. Venue and programmatic support provided by La Casa de Amistad.