The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
the b-side
Thursday, March 9, 2017 — 3B

The website of 2016 Penny 

Stamps graduate, multimedia 
artist and community activist 
Alexa 
Borromeo 
reads, 

“HOUSTON 
MADE. 
NOT 

AFRAID” in big, white block 
letters 
against 
an 
abstract 

backdrop that suggests fast 
horizontal movements across 
the screen, maybe taken from 
a train or or a fast-moving car.

“Houston 
has 
almost 

everything to do with why 
I do what I do … it’s a very 
culturally and racially diverse 
city,” said Borromeo in a phone 
interview.

Growing up in such a diverse 

community allowed for her to 
see race in a much less divisive 
way, 
leading 
to 
a 
certain 

culture shock upon her arrival 
to the University at the salient 
disparity 
between 
white 

people and people of color.

For 
example, 
a 
video 

installation 
titled 
“stay 

out of the sun: a colonized 
consciousness” presents the 
artist’s body as it exists within 
the post-colonial sphere and 
how the pressures of and 
assimilation bear down upon 
it. The artist bares her nude 

body in a public video and 
photo installation in which 
she engages in rituals such 
as placing clothespins on the 
bridge of her nose and covering 
her 
skin 
in 
white 
paint. 

Borromeo’s work consists of 
mainly photography, video and 
public art; all highly narrative 
in form — sharing her own 
stories as well as the stories of 
others in ways that challenge 
the status quo.

Much of the art reveals urban 

backdrops. A woman in a towel 

moves down a sidewalk as a bus 
teeters a little too close to the 
curb, obscuring her from view 
momentarily. A child sits on 
his caregiver’s lap on a subway 
in black and white, staring 
straight into the camera. A 
Chicago construction worker 
peers up at his coworker from 
inside a pothole.

Borromeo highlighted the 

importance of her Houston, 
TX upbringing in creating 
socially-engaged art.

While 
in 
high 
school, 

Borromeo 
identified 
the 

opportunity to connect interest 
in both community action and 
art.

“I saw the opportunity to 

bridge the two: my desire to 
help others and my desire to 
create art,” she said. 

One 
project 
Borromeo 

created was a film in which 
young adults reflect on early 
memories of when they first 
became aware of how their 
social identities made them 
somehow “different,” the face 
of each speaker obscured by a 
childhood photo. 

At 
the 
University 
of 

Michigan, Borromeo became 
involved in multiple pursuits 
that sought to explore the ways 
in which art could be used 
to 
strengthen 
communities 

and spark social change. She 
served as the Senior Opinion 
Video Editor at The Michigan 
Daily in 2014-15 and became 
involved with the Black and 
Asian Coalition on Campus.

Although Borromeo knew 

early on that she wanted 
to 
create 
socially-engaged 

art, she recognized her own 
process of self-exploration and 
returning to her own roots and 
identities as crucial steps in 
developing an activist/artist 
persona. During her senior 
year, Borromeo returned to 
Houston to examine her roots, 
collecting 
sound 
material 

from her past that culminated 
in a video installation at the 
Duderstadt Center.

“It was a good way to get me 

in the mode to really create 
more 
socially-engaged 
art 

because I had some stuff I 
needed to express individually 
first,” Borromeo said.

She also spoke to her own 

identities as a Filipina and a 
person of color as they affect 
her 
process 
and 
artistic 

interest.

“Being Filipina, which is 

a colonized culture and a 
very 
Americanized 
culture, 

sometimes Filipinos have a 
somewhat 
relatable 
quality 

to them because we’re so 

Americanized so sometimes 
Filipinos can fit into a lot of 
different ethnic groups easily,” 
she said.

She 
also 
identified 

challenges 
of 
reconciling 

the sometimes traditional or 
conservative 
limitations 
of 

Filipina culture as it brushes 
up 
against 
the 
sometimes 

provocative or explicit nature 
of her art. She identified 
admiration for other Filipina 
artists for venturing into that 
territory, 
despite 
societal 

expectations or norms. 

“It’s hard as a Filipina 

woman and artist to publicize 
the it the way I want to 
publicize it sometimes. That’s 
still something I’m navigating,” 
she added. 

Such 
acute 
observance 

and passion for combatting 
structural racism and other 
injustices, 
inspires 
almost 

all 
of 
Borromeo’s 
work. 

She 
became 
involved 
with 

a program in 2014 called 
Summer Youth Dialogues, in 
which she facilitated dialogues 
on race and ethnicity — an 
involvement 
that 
almost 

seemed 
to 
foreshadow 
the 

work she does currently.

Borromeo divides her days 

between Detroit and Ypsilanti. 
In Detroit she works with 
Focus: 
HOPE, 
a 
nonprofit 

organization in collaboration 
with AmeriCorps and Public 
Allies that seeks to put in place 

ARTIST
PROFILE

IN

‘U’ alum Alexa Borromeo 
lets identity shine in work

Independent artist stresses diversity and voice in her pursuits

COURTESY OF ALEXA BORROMEO

MARIA ROBINS-SOMERVILLE

Daily Arts Writer

“Houston has 

almost everything 
to do with why I 
do what I do … it’s 
a very culturally 

and racially 
diverse city”

At the University 

of Michigan, 

Borromeo became 

involved in 

multiple pursuits 

that sought to 

explore the ways 

in which art 
could be used 
to strengthen 
communities

TEDx and the pursuit of 
meaningful social change

About a year ago, on a 

beautiful morning, I sat outside 
on a deck. In my hand I had a 
mug of coffee, and as I sat I was 
enjoying the way the light wind 
tugged at my hair and snatched 
little rising lines of steam 
from the coffee. The birds 
chirped from the treeline in 
the distance. Across from me, 
my father reclined in a chair. 
We were discussing gardens: 
What plants we would want, 
why, where they would go — he 
wanted flowers, I vegetables. 
He wanted for the beauty; I 
wanted for the use. “It’s odd,” 
he said. “You of all people, an 
artist, I would think would 
appreciate things independent 
from 
their 
use.” 
And, 

innocuous as that comment 
is, it touched upon one of my 
central anxieties: What is the 
use of doing art in a fractured 
world?

***

By nature I am a rather 

pessimistic person. As long 
as I can remember, I have 
viewed the chance of success 
(no matter what the subject) 
with wary eyes. Whenever the 
clouds part to reveal a glorious 
sunburst, I squint and wonder 
what pitfall I’m missing. I 
have faith in very little other 
than the inevitability of decay. 
Paradoxically, I also get swept 
up by broad, romantic ideas 
about 
the 
possibility 
of 
a 

utopian future; I’m occasionally 
overcome 
with 
grandiose 

visions of total equilibrium 
and ample bounties, perfect 
worlds wrought with human 
hands, all of which I think is 
— theoretically — attainable. It 
just won’t happen. In essence, I 
believe that Elysium exists but 
that we’ll never reach it.

Enter TED talks: It shouldn’t 

come as a surprise that the 
entire concept is supremely 
uncomfortable to me. I simply 
don’t know what to think of it. 
On the one hand, having a place 
to share ideas and visions for a 
better world with the general 
public kindles an enticing spark 
of hope within my mind, a hope 
that we might yet do something 
to save ourselves and our 
planet from oblivion — at least 
for a little while longer. On the 
other, I sometimes wonder if 
TED isn’t just a collection of 
self-congratulatory 
pseudo-

intellectual liberal types who 
commend themselves for doing 
little more than acknowledging 
that the world has problems 
(which, granted, is probably an 
unnecessarily acerbic and not-
wholly-accurate critique, but 
there it is). I sometimes wonder 
if it’s not a great example of the 
sort of elite liberal smugness 
that has been so discussed 
over the past year. These two 
conflicting conceptions of TED 
have been in competition more 
or less since the first time I saw 
some lectures posted online 
years ago. When I first came 
to the University, the annual 

conference hosted on campus 
reawakened these ideas.

When I first conceived of 

writing about the University 
of Michigan TEDx conference, 
I envisioned something like 
this: I would walk into the 
conference, notebook in hand, 
wry smile suspended on my 
face, keenly observing the swirl 
of bodies flowing in currents 
around me, picking up snippets 
of enthusiastic conversation as 
I occasionally scribbled down 
some witty observation. I would 
sit quietly in the audience 
listening half-attentively to the 
lectures, making intermittent 
notes of insightful comments I 
would tuck away for later use. 
At the end of the presentations 
I would clap dutifully, pack up 
my things and go home. A week 
later I would have produced a 
commentary on my experience 
that would be simultaneously 
thought-provoking and funny, 
filled with clever observations, 
dry wit and telling anecdotes. I 
would be David Foster Wallace 
on a cruise ship, Hunter S. 
Thompson writing an obituary.

That was one year ago. A 

lot has happened in the world 
since then, and the inclination 
of my thoughts has turned dark 
concurrent with public events. 
I want us to do something to 
improve our world or mitigate 
the fallout from recent events, 
but more and more it seems as 
if our efforts yield nothing but 
an elongated death spiral. So, 
inevitably this article is going 
to end up very different from 
what I might have written 
even just a few months ago. 

In the past few weeks, I’ve sat 
down to write it maybe a dozen 
times, but each time I’ve found 
my ideas are haunted by the 
spectre of everything that’s 
been going on. By now I’ve just 
accepted that.

I brought the notebook at 

least.

This year’s TEDx Conference 

(at 
this 
point 
it’s 
worth 

point out that the University 
conferences are TEDx events, 
which means that they are 
organized 
independently 

from TED Conferences, LLC) 
was about a month ago now, 
and it was the first time I had 
attended an event of that sort. 
The conference was held at 
the Power Center on Fletcher 
Street, 
which 
is 
probably 

familiar to most Ann Arborites 
as 
that 
imposing 
concrete 

building with an abundance of 
windows and vaguely modernist 
architectural 
aesthetic. 
The 

first thing I noticed when I 
entered the building was the 
excited, high-decibel chatter 
bouncing around the concrete 
walls. The second thing was 
the large, firetruck red “TED” 
sign / sculpture, just in case 
there was any confusion about 

what was going on. People 
posed dramatically with this, 
capturing a piece of visual 
memorabilia with a little tap of 
their thumb.

The festivities surrounding 

TED began long before the 
first talk was given. In the 
lobby, tables and stands were 
assembled in a manner that 
vaguely 
resembled 
the 
air 

of a scaled-down, less weird 
carnival — imagine the energy 
without 
the 
strangeness. 

Refreshments were provided, 
courtesy of Avalon Pastries 
and 
RoosRoast 
Coffee. 
A 

heat-sensitive 
video 
camera 

displayed a real-time image 
of 
passers-by 
in 
vivid, 

psychedelic color. Along one 
wall was something called a 
“Dream Line,” where people 
would write an aspiration on a 
notecard before hanging it from 
a line already weighed down 
by dozens of other notecards, 
little pithy phrases like “turn 
compassion into action” or 
the standard-fare American-
Dream-style “get a job with a 
six-figure salary.” Not really 
my kind of thing, but after 
several friendly proddings by 
an eager-looking volunteer in 
a red TED shirt, I scribbled 
something down and left it. My 
favorite feature by far was the 
stand run by Literati, which 
contained a selection of books 
picked out by the featured 
speakers — there were even a 
few titles that are on my own 
to-read list. The atmosphere 
of the whole thing was that of 
optimistic pageantry.

The talks began after the 

audience — all 1,300 people 
— finished filing into the 
auditorium 
of 
the 
Power 

Center. After the usual we’re-
pleased-welcome-you standard 
introduction stuff, the first 
speaker strode onto the stage. 
The ASL interpreter stood 
poised at the edge of the 
platform, waiting for speech.

Koen Vanmechelen looks like 

a storm. His dark eyes and wild, 
graying hair perfectly embody 
the image of the pioneering 
artist — which is good, because 
that’s what he is. A close-up 
image of a chicken flashed 
onto the projection screen. The 
Belgian spoke.

“This is not a chicken,” he 

said. I honestly didn’t expect 
that.

Vanmechelen 
went 
on 

to 
discuss 
his 
years-long 

conceptual art project, the 
Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, 
explaining in imperfect but 
intelligent English the ways 
in which he tries to unify our 
diverse 
world 
through 
his 

art, which is a “metaphor.” 
Through 
the 
breeding 
of 

various types of chickens, he 
works to show the diversity and 
interdependence of humanity 
with itself and the natural 
world. Strange as it sounds, 
at the end of his presentation 
(which 
was 
punctuated 
by 

little “you know(s),” a habitual 
exclamation that seemed to 
both thrown-away placeholder 
and 
genuinely 
inquisitive, 

gently emphatic plea), I felt I 

DAYTON HARE
Senior Arts Editor

SECONDARY

What is the use 
of doing art in a 
fractured world?

See ARTIST, Page 4B
See TEDX, Page 4B

Amongst the hope and optimism of the annual UofM TEDx 
conference, reflections on meaning and change in a time of crisis

COURTESY OF TEDX UOFM

