Ronda Wright

My passion for diversity, equity, inclusion and cultivating a culture of belonging is personal. It was through education I found my voice, value and sense of belonging. My formal degree pathways allowed the opportunity to broadly explore materiality while coinciding the development of social practice and community engagement. In my practice, I use art as a social and relational tool to cultivate values of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. Situated within relational aesthetics, feminism and social action, involving methods of social exchanges that in their tangible dimension, serve as tools that link individuals and diverse human groups together. I am interested in the information exchange between artist and viewer, engaging community through (Inter) Action. Investigating what form can and does become when plunged into the dimension of dialogue. In 2013 I established a platform for creative social justice initiatives, SAFE = Social Action For Equality; through which I have initiated a series of workshops, one of which is titled Creating Artifacts of Home. Started in response to the overwhelming rate of LGBTQ+ homelessness, bullying, and suicide. The premise of these workshops is to begin with 2 commonalities; that we all have some relation to home; and that iron is an element necessary to sustain life. While engaging in conversation, participants are given a brick of wax and asked to create a symbolic artifact that reminds them of home. Participants naturally begin sharing stories with one another, as their sculptural form evolves to reflect a shared artifact. The artifact is then cast in iron, by me, and installed as part of a larger collection of memories that reflect relations of Home.

Participants’ artifacts link themselves not as “others,” but to others through this ongrowing interactivity