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Andrea Vela Alarcón is an educator, illustrator and community artist who comes from the Peruvian Amazon and is based in Tkaronto. Her professional background involves a wide range of community-engaged projects with communities across Peru and Canada, bringing together popular education and cultural production. Over the past 10 years, Andrea has facilitated spaces for creating participatory documentary, independent publications and video essays, all driven by a social justice framework, feminist care, and reciprocity.
Andrea’s illustration work is inspired by and deeply connected with Amazonian mestizo culture and interdependence with the other-than-human. Her style fluctuates between playful and colourful and symbolically charged line illustrations. She has won multiple art awards, exhibited in Peru and Canada, and has published children’s books in Peru and China.
Andrea created the custom icons for the Worlding Difference platform. Click into the gallery below for more information about each piece.
A design for an accessibility icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón. Inside a circle is a drawing of a fat person with spiky hair standing with their arms and legs outstretched, wearing trousers, a black cropped t-shirt and black shoes. The design is a playful challenge to the standard web accessibility icon, with its featured “universal” figure representing whiteness, masculinity, and slimness.Designs for a “Search” icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón, featuring three simple drawings of magnifying glasses. The one on the left is delicately outlined, the one at the centre has a darkened glass, and the one on the right features a bold, black outline.A design for a “Resources” icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón, featuring a drawing of a string net shopping bag holding a dark loaf of bread with an apple spilling out of the top. The design is inspired by Donna Haraway’s discussion of Ursula LeGuin’s “carrier bag theory of storytelling,” which posits theories and stories as “capacious bags for collecting, carrying, and telling the stuff of living.”A design for a “Members” icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón, a drawing of three black mushrooms with white, wavy vertical lines on their bell-shaped caps, and tall, curving stems. The mushrooms echo the recurring theme of mycelia found across the platform, symbolizing connection and interdependence.Designs for a “Contact” icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón, two drawings of paper planes, one an outline and one in black, each with wavy lines behind them to show that they are flying. Paper airplanes are symbols of finding creative, transformative ways to use everyday objects, akin to disabled people’s practices of discovering new ways to engage with the environment.Designs for “Glossary” icons by Andrea Vela Alarcón, featuring two drawings of books with their titles scribbled on the cover, one outlined with black pages and a black spine, and the other with a black cover. These icons recall the book format dictionaries that preceded the development of online sources for more information about words and their usages.Designs for a “Learning Modules” icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón, a drawing of three snails with striped shells, the first outlined with pencil drawing-like strokes, the second with a black body, and the third with a black shell. Snails are a symbol of “slow scholarship”, inspiring us to ruminate, and to consider deeply.A design for an arrow icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón. A drawing of a bold, black arrow pointing right.A design for an arrow icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón. A line drawing of an arrow with a 3D box effect, pointing right.A design for a “Projects” icon by Andrea Vela Alarcón, a drawing of an arched window showing three fluffy clouds against a black sky. The design represents an open vantage point through which to engage with the many projects featured on this platform.
