As a tribute to the Peruvian side of her family, Gateway junior Abigail Whisner initially was planning to visit a local Hispanic community center to create her entry for the 12th Congressional District’s annual art contest.
But when she stopped by, the center was eerily empty amid nationwide immigration raids and uncertainty among the Latino community about whether going to such a location would put them at risk of being detained, irrespective of their immigration status.
“I wanted something positive,” said Whisner, 17. “With all of the negativity surrounding immigration and ICE, I wanted to show Latino people coming together in celebration.”
What she found instead was a handful of office staffers and little sign of the regular events held at the center in the past.
“They said that several of the staff members had also been calling off from work, giving up work hours because they were scared,” Whisner said. “They ended up shutting down the entire first floor of the community center.”
The lack of activity led Whisner to populate her painting with “ghosts,” so to speak — human-shaped figures made with bright-but-translucent colors placed throughout the setting.
“I wanted to show the vibrancy and positivity of the Latino community here, but at the same time, that’s not what I saw at all when I was there,” Whisner said. “The ‘people’ I added in are almost apparitions. There’s a bit of ‘Are they there? Are they not there?’ They’re not fully in the space, which is what I ended up really liking.”
Judges in the contest liked it as well, naming it first among the three winners.
Whisner said there were several points at which she was dissatisfied with the piece, and she was not expecting her frustration to manifest itself in the artwork.
“At one point, I’d made an accidental smudge on the canvas, and when I went to fix it, I decided to add a little more light, and it started taking on more of a dreamish quality,” she said. “A lot of my friends really liked that addition, and I’m not sure why. Eventually, that led to adding the ‘people.’ ”
The piece, which Whisner titled “A lo cuesta de injusticia (The Cost of Injustice),” strays quite a bit from a much-more-common and familiar subject in her art: portraits.
Greta Severson, chair of Gateway High School’s visual arts department, said she wasn’t surprised that Whisner had difficulty grappling not only with her subject matter but with how the piece ultimately turned out.
“I think Abigail in this instance was able to paint what she was feeling better than she could say it or write it,” Severson said. “You can’t always articulate why you made each decision in a piece of art, but we can see it, and the viewing experience is subjective. We bring to this work what our perspective is, and there’s a lot to the piece that, to me, seems almost symbolic. The light she added maybe speaks to some of her friends and gives a sense of meaning that she didn’t necessarily intend. But that’s what comes from art — it’s a conversation.”
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, oversaw the 12th Congressional District contest. It is part of the annual Congressional Art Competition, which is sponsored each spring by members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Congressional Institute to celebrate the creativity of the nation’s high school students.
Whisner’s piece will be on display for a year in the Cannon Tunnel which connects the U.S. Capitol Building to the Cannon House Office Building. She also received two round-trip tickets to Washington, D.C., for a winner’s reception in June.
Whisner said creativity and art is an important part of her life.
“I have trouble expressing myself sometimes,” she said. “So it’s a lot easier for me to kind of project my emotions onto who or what I’m drawing.”
