Venue
Student Union
521 East Avenue N
La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601
Organizer
Caleb Colon-Rivera
(608) 785-5095
ccolon-rivera@uwlax.edu
Event Details
A Social Justice Week 2026 Featured Event with CK Ledesma
“Social Practice: A Conduit for Sanctuary Building” is a presentation and participatory workshop that examines how the arts function at the intersection of civic responsibility and public space as sites of community care and collective power. Grounded in social practice art, this session traces a brief history of artistic traditions rooted in resistance, highlighting how creative work has long served as a tool for organizing and social transformation. Participants will explore the role of the artist as a community organizer and through collaborative art-making this session emphasizes process over product, inviting participants to engage art as a relational practice for sustaining communities and envisioning more just futures.
Ck Ledesma Borrero is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, now living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for nearly two decades. Their artwork is rooted in community engagement and social practice, using performance, sculpture, and multimedia to create experiences that expand the definition of art beyond the object and into the realm of dialogue and collective meaning. Ledesma Borrero currently serves as the City of Green Bay’s Public Arts Coordinator and contributes their leadership to the field as an adjunct professor for the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and through service on boards including Woodland Pattern Book Center and co-chair of Walker’s Point Center for the Arts. They are a 2025 40 Under 40 honoree, the 2022 Mildred L. Harpole Milwaukee Artist of the Year, and a 2020 Established Artist Mary L. Nohl Fellow. They have held artist residencies with Milwaukee’s Cesar Chavez Drive Business Improvement District and Milwaukee Public Library. Their work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Milwaukee Art Museum, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Haggerty Museum of Art, Racine Art Museum, and through the Museums Association of the Caribbean–and, most notably, within our communities.