Egda Claudio

Open Wound

Honorable Mention

Egda Claudio is a second year PhD student in the Art Education Department. My family (husband and three kids) and I moved from Puerto Rico in the summer of 2018 so I could begin my doctoral studies at FSU. There I worked as a visual arts/ design teacher for 6 years and before that I had a wearable art clothing line. I studied graphic design in the School of Visual Arts, NY and while I was working, finished my MA in Art Education at the Universidad del Turabo, Puerto Rico. My artistic work has taken the form of wearable art, bookmaking and performance. Since moving to Tallahassee, I have focused on generating arts-based investigation and conceptual artwork. I am passionate about art education being a channel for social justice. Through my research I have used visual arts, design and performance to investigate topics like migration, identity, and displacement. I have also investigated the social justice visual arts curriculum as a decolonizing practice and our role as educators to implement this. As a vernacular language, visual arts and design play a major role in my research. It is through art-making that I conceptualize ideas analyze and arrive to findings and conclusions. This language allows me to tell untold parts of stories and expose the information that hides in-between the lines in a way that only art expression can achieve. Working closely with critical theory, design has allowed me to create metaphors through strong conceptual work that evokes consciousness and gives visibility to ignored issues. This practice has allowed me to advocate for critical issues in these contemporary times we are living of civil unrest.