Oli Rodriguez

Artist Bio

Oli Rodriguez was born in Chicago and grew up in Humboldt Park. He attended Whitney Young High School and continued on to DePaul University where he double majored in Psychology and Gender Studies with a minor in Media Art. While attending DePaul, Oli was apart of the Human Services track under Psychology and also in a Psychology Research Project, which focused primarily on education. This is where the start of his decade long interest and passionate commitment to Chicago Public and Charter schools began. He has worked in various schools in Chicago from Pre-school, grammar school to high school, including such schools as Schiller, Dvorak, Lawndale, Kelly HS, ACT Charter, Amundsen HS and with organizations such as Urban Art Retreat, Uptown Hull House Center , Parkwest Co-op, Public Allies and Little Black Pearl. Oli has focused on traditional classes such as English and Math, but also in other progressive and creative contexts such as, art therapy, immigrations rights, beautification of neighborhoods, activism, video and photography projects, music creation and performance poetry.

After completing his undergraduate degree, Oli went on to graduate school at Columbia College for several years, and then completed his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, working within the departments of Film, Video & New Media, Photography and Performance. Currently, he is Adjunct Faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Photography Department, as well as Westwood College in their Graphic Design Department. In addition to college teaching, Oli works with high school students at Little Black Pearl as an instructor for their Multimedia class, Collateral Damage, who uses creative activism to respond to CPS youth whose lives have been lost to gun violence.

Artist Statement

Over the last five years, my work has centered around conceptual ideas of childhood memories and recreations, the emergence of gender constructions and identities, the questioning of perception and the idea of inhabiting and ‘passing’ in relation to societal perspectives of race, class, age and orientation. I am interested in the intersection of video, photography and performance and use these as primary tools in my work.

Educational Philosophy

The power of media is an important resource for youth to touch, handle, grasp and utilize for storytelling, rants, conceptual ideas, metaphors, documentaries, narratives and most importantly for experimentation. Teaching media literacy and the operation of cameras is an important technical necessity, however the ideas that are communicated are an exceptional asset for youth in gathering agency to position them within the social media world. The power for their voices to be heard is far in scope and infinite. Using social media outlets, like video, digital images, the internet and assets of storyboarding are a dangerously strong combination for great idea oriented art and the dialogues that ensue.