For Monica Trinidad, Art Is Integral To Revolution (2024)

Visual artist Monica Trinidad is a force of creativity and activism who stands firmly at the intersection of art and organizing.

Monica Trinidad is a queer Latin visual artist, communicator, cultural strategist and lifelong Chicagoan. Their work creating zines, posters and other mixed media has fueled their youth-led and intersectional grassroots organizing, both within the Chicago community and across the nation.

“To me, it’s always important when I make my work to speak to the moment that we’re in now, but also to speak back to the past, to history.”

– Monica Trinidad

Trinidad grew up surrounded by creativity on the South Side of Chicago, and credits both their parents for sparking an interest in combining artistic practices with activism; their mother would call out schools for poor conditions and their father has made art throughout their entire life. Trinidad discovered their own voice for social change as a student at the University of Illinois Chicago, where they would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Gender and Women’s Studies.

“When I was in school, I got into a lot of anti-war activism,” Trinidad said. “That’s what I was first introduced to, and [I] really saw the power of young people seeing something that’s wrong and wanting to change it.”

Trinidad found the perfect intersection of her art and activism in the world of zine-making. A founding member of Brown and Proud Press, a POC-focused collective making small-batch and independently published zines, the art form became Trinidad’s canvas for uplifting marginalized voices.

“The role of artists, to me, is to make revolutions irresistible,” Trinidad said. “I think that there’s so much power that artists have in being very creative, in demonstrating how different our worlds can be. Organizers have these beautiful campaigns that are really powerful, and that have a lot of stories from people who are directly impacted. I think that’s where the role of posters and zines and graphics and any sort of visual art can really help to amplify that story.”

Trinidad is also host on the Lit Review podcast, works for Third Wave Fund and is the co-founder of the For the People Artists Collective, a space for artists of color to integrate their creative expressions with their organizing efforts. Their standout visual artwork can be found on the cover of Mariame Kaba’s New York Times bestseller, We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, available in most bookstores.

For this segment of “This Is What Chicago Sounds Like,” Monica Trinidad shares what it means to be both an artist and an activist.

What drives you to make the work you do?

The role of artists, to me, is to make revolutions irresistible. I think that there’s so much power that artists have in being very creative, in demonstrating how different our worlds can be. Organizers have these beautiful campaigns that are really powerful, and that have a lot of stories from people who are directly impacted. I think that’s where the role of posters and zines and graphics and any sort of visual art can really help to amplify that story.

Where are you from?

I’m from the South Side of Chicago, East Side. It’s a neighborhood, people often don’t think of it as a neighborhood. They’re always like, “The East Side? Isn’t that the lake?” My family migrated from Mexico there in the ’40s. I often felt like it was a forgotten-about neighborhood. I feel like it was really thriving when U.S. Steel [South] Works was there, but it was also a really tight-knit community. Everybody knows somebody. “Oh, you’re from this family? Okay, I know your cousin,” or, “I know whose family you’re a part of.” It was very tight-knit. Shout out Hienie’s, shout out Loncar’s, shout out Skyway Doghouse, shout out SkyART, shout out Under The Bridge Studio. It’s just a really beautiful community.

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Take me through your story. How did you become an artist?

My dad actually, he’s an artist. He’s an Art Institute of Chicago dropout, which I love that. And he still makes art to this day. My mom is also an incredible creative person, as well. And I actually was very inspired growing up by the way that she would come into my schools and see the really horrible school conditions that existed, and was like, “This is not okay.” And would come in, sneak past the principal’s desk, come take photos. She put them on blast. And I love that. I was like, “I want to marry those two. How do I marry visual art and the action together?” I felt like maybe this is my role in supporting movements for justice.

I went to UIC, but I really got into campus activism. At that time, when I was in school, I got into a lot of anti-war activism. That’s what I was first introduced to, and [I] really saw the power of young people and seeing something that’s wrong and wanting to change it. That was my introduction to activism, but I still felt like something was missing. After I graduated from college, I got into the world of zine-making. That’s when I created this zine collective of people of color called Brown and Proud Press.

“As soon as I see an injustice happen, I want to make something.”

– Monica Trinidad

What is a zine?

The easiest way to explain what a zine is, it’s short for magazine, except it’s created very DIY: No major publications, no institutions who are printing it for you. You’re literally sitting, typing on a typewriter is really the old-school way to do it. You’re pasting it onto paper, and then you’re going to like Xerox copy it somewhere — maybe for free, maybe figuring out the code to how to do it for free. That’s what you’re doing. You’re basically telling your story with the littlest to no resources that you might have. That’s a zine, and that’s really rooted not just in punk culture, but it also goes way back to Ida B. Wells was making zines. She was making zines about her anti-lynching work. Then there was the Harlem Renaissance, folks were making zines back then, too.

It’s just anything that you can self-publish yourself, to tell your story. Through that community, I think, we just blossomed into so much more, around, “Well … now that we’ve formed this community, and we’ve formed these relationships and we’ve told our stories, how can we utilize these stories to take action?” That’s when I created For the People Artists Collective that was in 2017. And that was a beautiful collective of artists of color, who identified as artists, but also organizers but often felt like, in their organizing spaces, they didn’t feel like they could bring their art into it, or didn’t know how. I think from there, I was like, “Well, let’s create this space.” Let’s create this new space of belonging for artists to figure out how we can utilize our organizing skills that we have, and our artist creative skills to support movements for justice in Chicago.

What’s an example of how art and organizing come together?

There was this campaign called No Cop Academy. It was a campaign around Rahm Emanuel’s time in 2017 that was to stop the construction of a $95 million police academy on the West Side. Something that was really beautiful about this campaign was, not only was it led by Black youth on the West Side, but it also didn’t make art an afterthought in the campaign. Art was a the forefront.

When the campaign launched, there was this question around how are we going to incorporate art throughout the campaign? And it actually launched around an art exhibit, where we asked community members, “How would you spend $95 million in your community?” And then those artists responded with art. We had this huge art exhibition that was really beautiful, actually, at Art In These Times. It brought so many people in to see the work, but then it was also an opportunity to be like, “And now how do you want to tap into this campaign?” I think that was like this multi-layered, beautiful way to experiment with utilizing art as a tool for organizing.

^{“Feminist Futures” and “Lead-Free Water” by Monica Trinidad. Images provided}

What do you feel like is important to share about your particular art practice?

Something with my creative practice that it feels really important to me is, there is a seasonality to the work that I really, truly believe in. I think that sometimes — and this is in order to challenge burnout. Because often when I give talks to people, they’re like, “How do you do all of this stuff? You make art, you hosted a podcast, you are an organizer, you work for a foundation. How do you do it all? How do you make it work? And how do you not burn out?” And I’m always like, “That’s a great question.” I’m still trying to figure that out, but one thing that speaks to me is seasonality with our work.

There can be really busy times when you’re organizing nonstop, going to the meetings, making art, going, going going. Sometimes that’s necessary and urgent, and then sometimes it’s important to take a step back and have some time to reflect on your work. I call it the hibernation period, where you have to just sit back and think on, “Okay, what’s the work that I’ve created? How has it made an impact? And what are the mistakes I’ve made?” Because that’s also part of this work. Experimentation is a huge part of making art in collaboration with movements. And with experimentation, there’s always mistakes and there’s always going to be — I don’t want to say failures, because there is no failure in experimentation, there’s just lessons learned. I think we need to make sure that we’re making space for that reflection period.

Right now, I would say, I’m in a deep reflection hibernation period with my art. The last piece that I’ve made was a piece that spoke to the genocide that’s happening in Gaza right now. After October 7 happened, I was struggling with what art do I make, right? Because as soon as I see an injustice happen, I want to make something. I was really struggling with like, “What can I say? What would make an impact right now?” I listened to a few talks and was listening to what people were saying on the ground, and I made a poster of an olive tree branch that said, “We will never look away.”

Something that I was taking away from this moment is that this genocide that’s happening in Gaza right now isn’t new. It isn’t just this one incident. There’s a long legacy of what Palestinians have been up against, and I think that’s also a reoccurring theme in my work. A lot of my artwork has spoken to police violence in Chicago.

Something that I’m deeply proud of, in my organizing work with For the people Artists Collective, was an exhibit that we did called “Do Not Resist? 100 Years of [Chicago] Police Violence.” It was in 2018. Again, it was a timeline of 100 years of police violence, and the purpose of this was to show that these incidents of police violence, they’re not just a one-time incident. It’s connected to this long legacy of police violence that has gone on since police have existed. To me, it’s always important when I make my work to speak to the moment that we’re in now, but also to speak back to the past, to history. And also now, “What are we going to do about it? What are we going to do to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?” So that’s why I create. I create to remember, and I create to make sure that we don’t forget.

Since 2016, we have been profiling people who give their all to Chicago and enrich us socially and culturally by virtue of their artistry, social justice work and community-building. Take a listen. Read their words. Become inspired.

Interview and audio production by Ari Mejia

Written introduction by Blake Hall and Morgan Ciocca

Transcription and editing for length and clarity by Morgan Ciocca

Photos by Ari Mejia

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