Ground
Works

Realm of the Dead (“Realm”) is a mixed-media installation performance where the installation can also be given separately as an art exhibit. A blend of social work and arts research, Realm incorporates practice-led, engagement, and design research – visual and performance art practices actively involving both research collaborators and audiences. Grounded in social work research and content, Realm explores my life, the life of an immigrant to the United States who grew up in Brazil at the time of the military dictatorship (1964‒1985). Realm connects social work research content as it explores personal and social consequences of psychosocial issues: grief and loss, gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, and undocumented immigration status. Using critical autoethnography along with visual art and performance, in Realm, I aimed to: (1) excavate my life experiences through self-analysis; (2) develop text and artifacts (assemblage sculptures) representing those experiences, and (3) share the results as performances and art exhibits. Drawing on Popular Education – as advanced by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1921–1997) and by Augusto Boal (1932–2009), founder of the Theater of the Oppressed, Realm requires audience participation and fosters social transformation. Realm is based on Marília, a one-person play that was performed on Theater Row New York City where it won the United Solo Festival (2016) Best Documentary Script award. Realm represents the cemetery where Marília, my sister, who died in an accident at the age of three, was buried. Realm is my journey out of a childhood of poverty, sexual trauma, and domestic violence. Arriving undocumented in the United States in 1987, I ultimately built a life as a United States citizen and out, gender non-conforming gay “man.”

here-ing is an environmentally embedded artwork by Janine Antoni commissioned by the Spencer Museum's Arts Research Integration (ARI) program in collaboration with the University of Kansas Field Station and School of Architecture & Design. Working across architecture, art, audiology, and environmental science, this project offers embodied and culturally responsive practices, including place-based and artistic research methods, for reconstructing healthier native grasslands and understanding the ecological relationship between the environment and human body. here-ing is a three-acre labyrinth stretching across three former farm fields and designed in the shape of the anatomy of the human ear. The creation of here-ing was a multi-year process that began with a prescribed burn, plotting the design into the fields, and carving a large-scale finger labyrinth onto a native limestone boulder placed at the trailhead to orient visitors and increase accessibility. Visitor footsteps on the labyrinth trail create and maintain the path for those who come after them. If the path ceases to be walked, it will be reclaimed by the tallgrass prairie and only remain through story. Visitor participation in creating the piece ultimately demonstrates the nature of good land stewardship: a committed relationship to nature and place that bridges diverse cultures to better nurture the land. Since its inception in 2021, here-ing has continued to evolve through public participation, re-seeding, and ongoing workshops and education around collaborative Indigenous-led cultural burns to stimulate healthy native species regeneration.