You are invited to attend the 2024 Joel Barkan Memorial Lecture, featuring Daniel Arzola, senior graphic designer, University of Minnesota.

Topic: Artivism by Daniel Arzola: Art, Communication, and Identity

Arzola's lecture will explore the story of how an art student ended up creating the first LGBTQ+ campaign to appear in the media in Venezuela. The #NoSoyTuChiste (#ImNotaJoke) campaign went viral between 2013 and 2014, and has been exhibited in different cities worldwide. Since its creation, it has continued to be displayed in public places, including bus stops, subway stations, galleries, museums, and parks. Arzola's narrative is a queer testimony about Venezuela during the Chavista dictatorship, but it is also the voice of art as a response to a systematically violent environment. The lecture addresses the role of art within its dynamics to communicate and the democratization of art in the face of repressive societies.

The Joel Barkan Memorial Lecture is an annual lecture hosted as a part of the Provost's Global Forum in International Programs. This year's Provost's Global Forum: LGBTQ Youth in Global Perspective - Resistance, Resilience, Reimagination, brings to campus experts from around the globe to speak to the power and agency of LGBTQ youth and their stories.