Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, PhD is the inaugural director of the Lawrence and Isabel Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise, and Associate Professor of Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University. Dr. Mañjon works with both undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in arts management, entrepreneurship, community collaborations, institutional partnerships, community arts, and civic engagement activities. She is also committed to initiatives and programs that attract, retain, and inspire students, faculty and, staff from underrepresented groups on campus. Dr. Mañjon has completed numerous projects, video documentaries, and publications, including 100 Families Oakland: Art and Social Change, documentation of a community-wide collaborative program model and its impact, Invisible Identity: Mujeres Dominicana en California, a video/ photographic installation, presented at the California African American Museum as part of a larger exhibit, An Idea Called Tomorrow – and many more. Her second documentary, The Experience of Immigration and Acculturation of Four Generations of Dominican Women in California, is based on her dissertation and is currently in production.
Dr, Mañjon’s photographs shown at the festival are part of the installation “Invisible Identity: Mujeres Dominicanas en California,” as part of the In/Visible Identities Series. Manjon's work explores how photography, video, ethnography and oral history both capture expressions of identity and allow for particular identities to be expressed. Manjon suggests that identities are comforting, until they aren't; identities are situational, yet not always; and while we may think we already know what a particular identity category means, we often don't. Manjon's installation focuses on the less well-known Latina/o population of Dominican immigrants in the U.S., however, this work asks us all to consider: “The question of identity within physical space…and the perception of living silently between two worlds…and belonging to neither.”
