Episode 14
Art About My Community, For My Community w/ Jovanny Hernandez Caballero
In this episode of the podcast, Elisabeth speaks with Jovanny Hernandez Caballero, a photographer and photojournalist from the south side of Milwaukee. Hernandez Caballero is an Art and Design major with an emphasis in Photography and Imaging at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, currently completing his BFA. As the son of immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, Jovanny’s work explores themes of his cultural heritage and identity. Through his art practice, he documents the rich and positive stories of life in his community on Milwaukee’s South Side, and conducts a kind of “reverse anthropology” to explore and document his own roots and his family in his family's native land of Oaxaca, Mexico.
In the conversation, they cover his early influences, including the extensive mural artworks of Milwaukee, that speak to his identity and culture, as well as the power of attending May Day marches in Milwaukee on inspiring his interest in design. He reflects on the early transformative opportunity to participate in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards at the Milwaukee Art Museum. This year, Hernandez Caballero served as a judge in the Milwaukee branch of the competition. He reflects, too, on the influence of growing up and coming into his own art practice within the tight knit creative community of Milwaukee, where artists ban together to support one another, and organizations like the Walkers Point Center for the Art help empower artists by connecting them with opportunities and mentorship.
A focus on community and identity is at the heart of Hernandez Caballero’s art work, and also drives the work that he does in photojournalism: as a photojournalist for the Journal Sentinel, he focuses on telling positive community stories about, in particular, Milwaukee’s South Side. From his perspective, photography has an “innate truth” and often is regarded as proof or a cultural remnant. This has influenced his both photojournalistic and art practices — in documenting his family in Oaxaca, Mexico, and in Milwaukee, to make sure he is capturing the nuance, beauty and positivity in underrepresented communities that are often his subjects.
You can follow Jovanny’s work on Instagram at @Jovanny.11.
