Navigating My Culture
Through Art An Interview with Raul Perales by Jessica Rivera, PhD Educational Studies
Raul is currently an MFA student in the design program at OSU. He is originally from El Paso, Texas. He is currently working on his Master’s thesis, that merges his passion for design with his Latinx background as a way to help people navigate loss. Can you tell me a little about yourself, where you grew up, how you got interested in art? I’m from El Paso Texas, right on the border of Juarez, Mexico. My dad is from Utah and my mom grew up in El Paso. Growing up in El Paso really shaped a lot of who I was. There was so much art being made there, and I wanted to be a part of that. Even my parents were both artists, not in title, but they really love art. I am the only person in my family that decided to make art my entire life and make a career out of it. When did you start taking art classes? My school’s art programs were cut by the time I was able to take them. I mostly learned to draw from watching my parents. They would like to draw as a hobby and when I would see them drawing, I would sit down next to them and draw too. Then I found out about design in college, and I felt more attuned to that. I’m designing games that focus on what it means to be Hispanic American. It feels good to do that because it is something I have struggled with. For one of my projects, I was able to in12
terview my family as a designer and that really brought me closer to them and allowed me to access a part of my past that I didn’t have before. Growing up, school was challenging, because there was a lot of shame in being a Spanish speaking kid. As a result, I lost my ability to speak Spanish. What influences your art? I think my third year of college there was a cartoon called Steven Universe that approached very adult concepts like coping with death and loss, how it feels to grow up in a single parent household, blended families and dealing with generational trauma. And it did this so elegantly, but it still looked like a kids show that talked about very broad topics that are often heavy. The show didn’t talk down to its viewers and it didn’t try to confuse them or try to be profound, it just talked. One of the biggest strengths of design is knowing what you are trying to say before you say it. That really got me into game design. It was an avenue for people to feel connected to the narratives being told and be able to examine their own experiences. I thought then, why not try it with grief and loss? My original master’s thesis was looking into how people cope with specific traumas like anxiety or things like that. This led me to looking into games that help people mitigate feelings after facing traumas. I still do hope that my work helps others who have had similar traumatic experiences. Is there a specific audience for your art? I think I wanted to make art for a younger me. A younger me is someone who is trying to navigate being Hispanic and American. I always wondered if it was better to abandon your culture so that you didn’t have to keep going back and forth on your identity. When I saw the film Coco, it made me realize I needed to see parts of my own identity displayed in a big sense and I real-
