University of Illinois Springfield Associate Professor of Sociology/Anthropology Hinda Seif is part of a team that received a $200,000 grant to fund the Pilsen Latina Histories Monuments Project from the of the City of Chicago. The funding will be allocated from the $6.8 million Mellon Foundation Grant provided to the Chicago Department of Cultural and Special Events for the Chicago Monuments Project.
This second phase of funding will be awarded to the Pilsen Latina Histories Monuments Project to build temporary or permanent monuments that will be selected through a community planning process led by Teresa Maga帽a, director of the Pilsen Arts and Community House, with academic support from Seif and University of Illinois Chicago doctoral student Liliana Mac铆as.
The Pilsen Latina Histories Monuments Project is a collaboration between Pilsen Arts Community House, 天美传媒 Springfield, 天美传媒 Press and 天美传媒 System.
The Pilsen Latina Histories Monuments Project (PLHMP) is related to Seif鈥檚 research and collaborations with Latinas in Chicago鈥檚 Pilsen neighborhood that started during her 2016-17 sabbatical in the city. Since then, she has been writing about and working with 2023 Latinx Artist Fellow Diana Sol铆s of Pilsen, the lead artist of the PLHMP, who the U.S. Latinx Art Forum named one of 15 of the most compelling Latinx visual artists working in the U.S. today.
Through the , Seif was able to bring Sol铆s and Maga帽a to UIS for four visits to help inform the UIS campus and central Illinois communities about Latina histories and arts in Chicago. She also organized a panel for the Chicago Monuments Project on
鈥淚t is a great honor to be part of this important effort to elucidate and elevate the important contributions of Latinas in Pilsen, the historic heart of Mexican immigrant activism and arts in Chicago and the Midwest,鈥� Seif said.
Based on the research collaboration of Seif and Sol铆s, part of the project will honor the 50th anniversary of the bilingual/bicultural organization Mujeres Latinas en Acci贸n (鈥淢ujeres鈥�) in 2023 and the memory and legacy of a significant 1979 Pilsen street fair (the Festival de Mujeres) that Sol铆s organized and photographed with Mujeres.
The Chicago Monuments Project intends to grapple with the often unacknowledged 鈥� or forgotten 鈥� history associated with the city鈥檚 various municipal art collections and provides a vehicle to address the hard truths of Chicago鈥檚 racial history, confront the ways in which that history has and has not been memorialized and develop a framework for marking public space that elevates new ways to memorialize Chicago鈥檚 history. The call for ideas emphasized unconventional monuments that invite community engagement.