For this project, I wanted to highlight how artists often move across many fields and how their influence can extend far beyond their studios. Coming from a political background myself, I've always been drawn to artists who use their visibility to make statements. In the context of the current governmental climate, it felt especially important to foreground Latin American artists who were unapologetically themselves, and were unafraid to let their activism shape their work and political lives. 

Digital cultural heritage allows us to preserve and interpret the many roles that artists occupy, not only as creators, but as political actors and participants in social movements. 

These digitzied marterials make it possible to bring together artworks, photographs, and surveillance documents that would otherwise remain scattered across institutions. This matters because traditional archives preseve what institutions decide is important. Artists who were politically active, often fall outside those institutional priorities. Digital cultural heritage changes that, digital platforms let us gather materials from scattered sources.

Digital platforms let us: 

• include items that institutions never prioritize 
• preserve marginalized histories
• increase accessibility

Digital space lets these fragments, paintings/documents/photographs, speak to each other. When these items are scattered, the story stays scattered too. Bringing them together in this archive allows us to the see the larger picture, the tensions that only emerge when everything is finally in the same space.