Each year, hundreds of high school students participate in the Congressional Art Competition, where a winner is selected from each congressional district to travel to Washington, D.C., for an awards ceremony and to see their work displayed at the U.S. Capitol.
This year’s winner is Joselyn Orantes, who just graduated from César E. Chávez Learning Academies (CCLA), and will represent the Northeast San Fernando Valley’s 29th Congressional District. She was enrolled in the ArTES Magnet of CCLA and had previously participated in the art competition twice, though her work wasn’t selected. Her persistence to try again paid off this year.
She creates art that also brings awareness. A previous piece she painted was of her brother, a marine, with the message that many in the community push themselves to join the military because they can’t afford to attend college.
This year, she made an art piece that illustrates the struggles of displaced families at Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles where generations of families were removed, sometimes forcibly, to make way for Dodger Stadium. Her piece competed against other students in the district before it was selected as the winner by Congressman Tony Cárdenas.
“My artwork was specifically about gentrification, and it was about Latinos being kicked out of their homes,” Orantes said. “I feel like it’s still happening today. Our communities are changing and I’m seeing fewer minorities in these parts. Rent is going up and a lot of people don’t know what to do about that.
“It was such a hard topic to talk about, so I feel like it was easier to make art of it.”
In her artwork, Orantes portrays herself as a nopal, or tender cactus, an iconic symbol in Mexican history and folklore, representing resilience and endurance. In the background, a collage of photos depicts the families that lived in Chavez Ravine being removed. The dichotomy of the black-and-white pictures and the colorful cacti is meant to symbolize change and an end to gentrification.
“I decided to add myself [to represent] the new generation, but I decided to make myself green, representing that I am the rebirth and I am the symbol of the nopal, so I just wanted to make that very vibrant,” Orantes explained.
Orantes has always been interested in art since she was little. Her interest grew in middle school when she started to learn graphic design and later learned how to use Photoshop in high school.
For a long time, Orantes wanted to be an artist for Disney, but she also had an interest in the medical field. She eventually settled somewhere in the middle – she will be attending the University of Southern California studying biology with the goal to become a dentist.
As Orantes described it, “I mostly want to work on creating teeth. … I feel that it connects with art because you have to craft them [and] you have to use color theory for that. It really drew me towards it because I really want to be in the medical field.”
Although she will be focused on biology, Orantes plans to continue making art pieces that go with the theme of first-generation students when she starts attending USC. She’s already created two pieces: one is about imposter syndrome and the other is meant to convey feeling out of place. She has also applied to be part of the university’s First Generation Student Assembly – specifically, the communications chair – where she hopes to use her graphic design skills to make posters for campus events and to advocate for inclusivity.
“USC tends to talk a lot about diversity but doesn’t tend to push it or have it displayed through websites … and I want to make a lot of artwork for that like posters and spread them around to bring awareness to it,” Orantes said.
Orantes will travel to the capital on June 21 for the awards ceremony, where she will meet winners from other congressional districts. Her art piece, along with all the others, will be on display in the U.S. Capitol for a year.
