lovelessons | Yasmin Hernandez Art

LOVE LESSONS
...a meditation on the resistance required to elevate education to a liberatory space and practice
and education as a tool for liberation.
Project info below. Slides advance automatically. Click on image for description

Painting by Yasmin Hernandez Art dedicated to education and activism, mostly created in black and white with images of Palestinian student activists, a Puerto Rican school girl with flag, Ruby Bridges with her school bag and before and after images of Tom Torlino of the infamous Carlisle Indian School. The central image is of a school closing in Puerto Rico.

Love Lessons, Yasmin Hernandez, The People's Forum

Yasmin Hernandez Art
Love Lessons, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
8' x 8'
Sitting before Love Lessons, for scale purposes.
Love Lessons is a meditation on the resistance required to elevate education to a liberatory space and practice and education as a tool for liberation.

Love Lessons, Tom Torlino detail

This image combines students protesters in Palestine, referencing communities still fighting for liberation, with before and after portraits of Navajo man Tom Torlino sent to the Carlisle school. Before and after photos were custom at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania whose purpose was to assimilate indigenous a people into the culture of colonizing "Americans". Its most influential headmaster used the motto "Kill the Indian. Save the Man." The images is how they recorded their effectiveness in this racist scheme. It is believed that the photographer manipulated the after image in the studio so that Torlino would appear of a lighter complexion. In the painting, I include the after image in black and white and the before image in full color to honor his authenticity.

Love Lesons, 2018
Acrylic on Canvas
8' x 8'
Commissioned by The People's Forum, New York City

Resist to educate/ Educate to Resist
Love Lessons is a meditation on the resistance required to elevate education to a liberatory space and practice and education as a tool for liberation. It’s background is inspired by Post-2017 hurricane season Puerto Rico. The images emerge from a background of grey storm clouds, through which the yellow light of the sun begins to push and break through. The black and white imagery also references Puerto Rico's black and white resistance flag, as included in the painting. Both political and personal elements are incorporated from protest images, a reference to mass school closures in Puerto Rico, history of segregation and education for white washing as with the Carlisle Industrial school. The foreground includes images of children to consider the education to be found in our ancestral ways and in honoring the resources of this planet. My own sons are included.
Descriptions of image details in the slide show above include more information on the piece.

LOVE LESSONS ...a meditation on the resistance required to elevate education to a liberatory space and practice and education as a tool for liberation. Project info below. Slides advance automatically. Click on image for description

LOVE LESSONS
...a meditation on the resistance required to elevate education to a liberatory space and practice
and education as a tool for liberation.
Project info below. Slides advance automatically. Click on image for description