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Raoul Deal
Immigration Series #7: Shopkeeper
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Raoul Deal
Immigration Series #5: Lo Que Necesitas
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Raoul Deal
Immigration Series #4: Only What You Need
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"For over four decades, I have worked as an artist and educator in communities in the United States and Mexico, sometimes creating in collaboration with others. My work crosses boundaries of language, culture and time, and embodies a variety of creative disciplines including painting, sculpture, printmaking, writing, installation and community art.

Conceived in Mexico City, I spent much of my youth traveling back and forth between the US and Mexico. In 1979, after earning my BFA, I travelled for a year throughout South America. Upon returning, I settled in Chicago. My early work engaged with themes grounded in Latin American popular cultures, and the socio-political movements of the moment. I exhibited at “alternative” spaces- Axe Street Arena, Inkworks Gallery, Contemporary Arts Workshop, Hyde Park Arts Center- where artists expressed themselves freely without creative constraints often imposed by more commercial spaces. Eventually my wife and I moved to Mexico City where I completed a Master’s degree at UNAM/ENAP, commonly known as San Carlos. There we lived in a building of artists located between the National Palace and the Museo del Templo Mayor- where the Spaniards built the Metropolitan Cathedral atop the spiritual center of the Aztec Capitol. I worked with Felipe Ehrenberg, the storied Mexican artist who was a self-proclaimed neologist, and mentored many young artists interested in politics and popular culture. After seeing my exhibit at the Museo del Chopo, Cuban artist Leandro Soto invited me to teach in the Taller de Creación, which he founded in the Mayan-Chontal community of Tamulté de las Sabanas, Tabasco. Workshops there used art as a means for villagers to recover and explore historical memories passed down through oral traditions. I soon moved with my young family to the town of Xico, Veracruz, also known for its strong indigenous traditions. These experiences heightened my interest in using art as a tool for cultural and political transformation. After ten years in Mexico, we came to Milwaukee.

Because I liked to interact with communities around the city, the Peck School of the Arts (PSOA) hired me as an Artist-in-Residence. Later, I also became the Artist-in-Residence for the Cultures and Communities Program, charged with helping to bring communities into the university, and take students into the city. I founded the PSOA’s Community Arts BA Program which I coordinated until I retired from the university with Emeritus status in 2023. For years I generated art projects in Milwaukee communities, and involved students through undergraduate research, service learning, and as my assistants on murals, community art commissions, and art therapy projects that used papermaking as a means to help people process trauma. In recent years I have focused on printmaking. I have an ongoing project for which I speak with Mexican families on Milwaukee’s south side about their immigration stories, and create prints based in those conversations. My prints are often accompanied with poems written by my wife and daughter."

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In Collection:

Arizona State University (ASU) Museum of Art

Raoul Deal

Immigration Series #7: Shopkeeper

Immigration Series #5: Lo Que Necesitas

Immigration Series #4: Only What You Need