UO junior Mikalo Arenas wants to be able to send a message to the masses through their art — “to have it be felt within the soul and stay with the people is the goal,” they said. “And art can provide this.”
Arenas is majoring in women, gender and sexuality studies and minoring in both theater and sociology. They are Crow Indian and Mexican and, for them, art and activism surrounding their identities are linked to each other. They use art both as a direct form of activism and a form of self-care to tend to the burnout that often accompanies activist work.
“Art gives me the ability to reconnect with my voice. Whenever I am unable to find the right words to explain something, I go to art,” Arenas said.
Painting and written word are the two art forms that Arenas is currently most drawn to. They tend to decide in the moment which medium will best express their thoughts and emotions.
Arenas also models or “presents” themself authentically to the world. Modeling is a form of radical self-love, especially for someone who defies gender norms, they said.
“It also is a form of letting the world know that we are still here, as Native beings. I am thriving and I am living and I am loving,” Arenas said. “Against all the odds I have still somehow made a way to love and to live.”
Pursuing a minor in Theater Arts, Arenas has spent lots of time in the theater department at UO. The theater department is very White, and they often feel tokenized as a non-binary Person of Color, Arenas said. In one costume class, they were told that they needed to shave their face to apply make up and continue with the class. They felt like their experience was erased in that moment, as someone who already did makeup and knew it is very possible with facial hair.
“There’s a lot of tokenising within the theater community,” Arenas said. “As a non-binary person, someone who defies the status quo of gender, being looked at and asked specific questions about that.”
This is not the only experience Arenas has had at UO that made them frustrated with the university.
“UO for me has always been a soul crushing experience,” Arenas said. “It will always be a soul crushing experience, being a BIPOC person within a colonial institution that is not made for you.”
Arenas cited the Pioneer and Pioneer Mother statues as a reminder that the campus is built on colonialism. They smiled as they talked about the statues being taken down last year.
Land acknowledgements – the recognition that the land was originally inhabited by Indigenous people – at UO and on people’s Instagram bios, bother Arenas. They said that land acknowledgements can be a problematic form of “modern erasure” when done incorrectly.
“If you are going to acknowledge the genocide of a people, you need to put more time and effort and emotions into that,” Arenas said, referring to short land acknowledgements before events on campus. “Not just something that you feel like you need to do so people don’t yap at you.”
One of the main ways Arenas processes their emotions, especially related to activism, is through their art. In one poem, “Conversations with the Moon,” Arenas describes the pain and sadness experienced in their life.
“Constantly being conditioned by colonizers / Has felt like I was forced into hibernation / Like my soil has gone rotten from years of contamination,” Arenas wrote.
For Arenas, part of both art and activism is being radically authentic, especially through “my words, my aesthetic, my being, how I dress myself, my gender,” they said.
“BIPOC people, we don’t have the ability to choose whether or not we are activists,” Arenas said. “That is something that was chosen for us.”
Campus Creatives is a weekly column by A&C reporter Nika Bartoo-Smith that highlights unique and talented members of the UO community. If you know someone who should be featured — whether they started their own business, run a podcast or just love to dance — email Nika at [email protected] or or Tweet her @BartooNika.
Mikalo Arenas stands in the Pioneer Cemetery on the University of Oregon Campus on May 4, 2021. “Acknowledging that you are participating in the displacement of indigenous people [with land acknowledgements] does not absolve you from your participation in colonization.” said Arenas. Arenas, a third year Women, Gender and Sexuality studies major, uses their passion for poetry, modeling, theatre and fine art as a means of activism for the issues that they are passionate about (Isaac Wasserman/Emerald).
