((PKG)) PIA -- ZARELA MOSQUERA
((Banner: Community Design))
((Executive Producer: Marsha James))
((Camera: Kaveh Rezaei))
((Map: Washington, D.C.))
((ZARELA MOSQUERA, DESIGN STRATEGIST))
What inspires me to create is a constant need to challenge myself and also to problem solve. Being a designer or creative almost becomes like a lifestyle because you are constantly surrounded by challenges and beautiful things and ugly things and you are just always observing the world.
I was born in Brasilia, Brazil. I lived there for maybe like three years of my life, very little, and then my parents and I moved to the Dominican Republic, to the capital Santo Domingo. That is where I learned English. And then I moved to the States where I did high school, so that crucial time where you are hitting your teenage years.
I mean, I always knew that I had like a connection to the arts as a kid, drawing and painting, but I never thought I am going to be able to make money out of this.
So right now, my position is called a design strategist, and my role is to basically find what is the best solution for what the client needs. I wanted to create an experience that made you reflect. The walkway became to be through the Department of Arts and Humanities in Washington, D.C., and they put out a bid that they wanted to see public art that was related to street harassment and to the public realm and how that affects pedestrian safety.
Seeing as we are architects and we are designers, we see the public realm as a way of communicating a lot of messages through design. So, there was a lot of research at first that was like the phase one is what I would say, and then a lot of ideation, a lot of sketching. Just conceptualizing what it could entail and also how do you communicate this message that is very politically charged, but also has to be presented in a very safe manner because there’s families. It’s a public project.
We wanted the form of it to create an impact in you. So, the walkway, first and foremost, it integrates itself with the pedestrian flow that is already in the city. So, the walkway is wider at the ends and as you walk in, it narrows in, and in conjunction with that, we have stories that, on the wider ends, are more harmless, possibly more positive, and as you are walking in it, the stories become more darker, more violent, more threatening. A lot of, especially with women, when we asked them, they said “I see myself in here.”
What people were kind of mentioning or commenting about is how diverse it is. So, that brings up the conversation as to what is a right way to talk to each other in a public space. Should we talk to each other at all? So, people were really questioning that and that is what public art is meant to do.
