2016
Art Talk with Raquel de Anda, The National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works Blog
The Washington Post, EnterState
Remezcla, Meet Raquel De Anda, The Curator Using Interactive Art To Take On Police Brutality
Huffington Post, How Artists Are Using Row Houses To Empower Citizens In Houston
Vice, The Creators Project, 22 Houses Preserve Black History and Culture in Houston
2014
New York Times, Themes For a March, Solar City, Natural Haven
New Yorker, The Three Hundred Thousand
Apart from the march’s turnout—more than three hundred thousand people—what distinguished it from the climate-change protests of the past was the relative diversity of the crowd. The climate-change movement is still mostly made up of white people and still falls short of adequately representing the multinational effects of climate change, but on Sunday, organizers were going for a broader coalition—and they got it. Raquel de Anda, a curator and one of the Mayday organizers, was partly responsible for the demographic shift. She helped convince groups that usually focussed on social-justice issues—organizations like Culture Strike—that “the climate-justice movement is about human rights.
2012
Washington Post, Young [Undocumented] Immigrants Fly Kites and Dream of Freedom, Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post, Artists Go Beyond the Gallery Walls, By Michael O'Sullivan
If art is only what you can see, then “The Ripple Effect” isn’t much of an art show. The group exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas -- a collaboration between the museum and the Washington Project for the Arts -- provides more food for thought than eye candy.
But if, as the show’s title suggests, art isn’t just the pebble thrown into the pond but the way it disturbs the water’s surface, then this show is a fine and far-reaching one.
Smartly organized around the theme of social engagement by independent curator Raquel de Anda, “The Ripple Effect” includes video, sculpture, photography, digital media and installation, but its roots are in performance and subversive action. What you see in the gallery is often merely documentation of something that happened elsewhere, the effects of which may still be reverberating, in ways that can be felt more than seen.