Artist Chat Travieso hopes to foster community engagement as Mason Gross' new Tepper Chair

Chat Travieso, the co-founder of Yeju & Chat, has begun his position as the new Tepper Family Endowed Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, according to a press release.

In 2011, the Tepper Family Endowed Chair in Visual Arts was created as a position for artists who have shown success in their academic and artistic pursuits. The artists who take on this project offer the Mason Gross community a variety of expertise and abilities.

"I am very happy to be joining Rutgers as the Tepper Chair," Travieso said. "I'll be teaching courses at Mason Gross, undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as broadening and reinforcing community connections."

Travieso told The Daily Targum that he became interested in art during his childhood. He said that his parents were creative, along with his sisters, and now, looking back at his previous artwork, he noticed that the overarching theme was people and human connection.

After studying fine arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Travieso said that he pursued his graduate studies at the Yale School of Architecture and continued to work in architecture at several offices. Furthermore, he said that he met Yeju Choi, a designer and the other founder of Yeju & Chat, when they worked together at the WXY Studio, and they eventually began their collaborative design initiative in 2019.

In their joint practice, Yeju & Chat, Travieso and Choi produce interdisciplinary, local community-based and socially oriented public artwork pieces to strengthen social ties in New York City.

"Right now, we are working on a project for the Brooklyn Children's Museum," he said. "We're bringing in scaffolding inside the museum, turning it into an interactive installation."

Travieso told the Targum that he is planning to apply his experiences to the Tepper Chair by incorporating educational community engagement at Rutgers. He said that he began his education career as a youth educator for the Center for Urban Pedagogy, an organization that aims to bring awareness of complex policy issues to the public.

Furthermore, he said that he has co-founded a youth education program called Wall (In) at the Arts for Learning Miami. In the program, he said that he works with young people in the Liberty City area in Miami, Florida, and creates art projects as a response to the history of a segregation wall in the neighborhood.

"This experience of doing youth education work really informed my practice and my interest in creating more inclusivity for young people," he said. "In terms of what I want to bring to this role as the Tepper Chair is, how might we be able to teach this sort of … community-engaged practice in a way that is responsible?"

Travieso said that he will be asking his students if his approaches are helpful to them so that he can best cater the course to their needs. He also said that for community-engaged practices, there isn't always a formula to follow, and adapting is necessary.

Travieso said that he is excited about entering and becoming more involved at Rutgers because it is a public research institution. Also, he said that the student body is very diverse, so they will be able to make connections when discussing issues in the community.

"I'm already working with all these other departments and schools on projects … not only within the University … but also outside the University," he said. "I want to be a sort of catalyst for projects that can have a real positive impact."