As part of her latest art installation, Bella Varela made a video at her family’s house in Columbia Heights, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
In the video, Bella interviews family members about their relationship to the house and the city. At one point, she’s talking to one of the elders of her family, who tells Bella that she’s frustrated about rats. With the influx of new people in the neighborhood, there’s been a dramatic increase in garbage. The rats are running rampant, finding their way into the house. After a while, Varela asks a question.
"Do you think it's a rat problem or a human problem?" Varela asked.
“It’s the people,” her relative replied. “I think it’s more about the people than the rats.”
The video is titled “Rats R Us,” and the installation it’s part of is called “Rat City.” The work is currently on view at Pidgin Palace Arts in Tucson, where Varela also went to school.
Varela said the project is inspired by the waves of gentrification she’s witnessed everywhere she’s lived — Tucson, El Paso, Austin and D.C., where her family home still stands for now. Varela joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
BELLA VARELA: I think the goal is to hopefully one day come back and maybe live at this house again, but as we know, that's complicated not just in D.C. but in any city that's dealing with overdevelopment. It's really hard for those homes to stick within the family because sometimes you have to sell the home to pay for your retirement. Is it a bad thing? Is it a good thing? It's complicated and hopefully this show or this exhibition of work shows that it's a nuanced thing.
SAM DINGMAN: That's one of the things that's really interesting to me about your work is this nuance. So I think a lot of people listening to this can understand the negative implications of families having to move from places they consider home. Tell us a little bit about the other side of it because I don't think that gets talked about as much. What do you see as the nuances there, the potential positives of that?
VALERIA: Well, I guess some of, I mean, I'm just gonna talk from a personal standpoint.
DINGMAN: Of course.
VALERIA: Parents in my home in D.C. So I think when we moved there in the late '90s, right? So it's an area called Columbia Heights, which is a historically brown and black and immigrant family or community. And when we first moved there, the prices were low, which was great, but the crime rate was a little bit higher, so it felt a little bit unsafe, growing up there at times. The schooling was not that great, so my parents made us go to school within a different neighborhood, which was also complicated. But I think that changed a little bit, right? So a lot of people started moving within the early 2000s to our neighborhood in Columbia Heights. We had a huge influx of young professionals moving in. It's a neighborhood that's literally right outside of the bounds of downtown. So when more people start to move into work in D.C., a lot of those people decide to live in Columbia Heights. So it made our property value go up, which was great for my parents. This is the first home that they had ever owned in the United States. And so for them, they thought that was very exciting, right? They were in their minds living the American dream.
SAM DINGMAN: If I may be, I feel like you're hitting on something that's really provocative about your work, which is that your parents, it sounds like we're in this position where there was an immediate economic benefit, that there was this sense for them of gentrification is providing an opportunity for upward mobility for us from a class standpoint.
VALERIA: Yes, exactly.
SAM DINGMAN: But then it falls to the next generation, in this case you to then think of the cultural loss component that can accompany that upward mobility.
VALERIA: Yeah, and I think also not just upward mobility for me, right? So like me and my sisters, we all went to college, we're all educated, but what about the rest of the neighborhood, right? Like for me, that's what I'm really starting to think about, right? Because there were pockets of families that were able to access a better education and resources for their kids, and then there's a lot of families who've been totally left behind.
SAM DINGMAN: Well, it seems like this tension is what comes through so clearly in “Rat City.” Let's talk about the rat. We've talked about the city component. Let's talk about the rat component. Why "Rat City?"
VALERIA: Part of our urban environment in Columbia Heights does not just include humans. It also includes all the fuzzy critters and creatures that also live alongside us, so Norway rats or brown rats. That also is another tension that's been happening in our city like the rise of rats, so it's the rise of gentrification. Rise of “invasive species of rats.” And so those two coexisting, I think is hopefully where my work can exist.
SAM DINGMAN: Well, it's one of the reasons I think "Rat City" is such a compelling title. I mean, one, it's obviously very grabby. But more than that, you're talking about rats in a very nuanced way. It seems like in one sense the historic members of a community with the winds of gentrification end up sometimes getting treated like pests.
VALERIA: Mass deportation of rats, right? That's the language that I think is interesting. When we think about immigrant communities being pushed out and displaced and it's that language with immigrant communities and with rats and invasive species also is very similar.
SAM DINGMAN: But it strikes me that you're also, if I heard you correctly, you could also apply the rat or the pest characterization to the gentrifiers. You're treating them as the invasive species.
VALERIA: Exactly. So it's all kind of very circular and it is not my job as an artist to decide whether something is good or bad. It's to again show that nuance, and I hope that's hopefully that's their part.
SAM DINGMAN: Let's talk about that. Tell us about the exhibition that combines a lot of different kinds of media.
VALERIA: Yeah, so the process starts off with photos that are all being turned into these dye sublimation prints, and so that's just a process that's taking a digital image and printing it onto a blanket. And I feel like it has that same, I call it the hustle mentality, and I think my family and other immigrant families have it, like when things don't go right or you have to get up and you have to move. The fabric and the art can also have that energy as well. I just printed red brick, a very basic red brick wall onto like the fuzzy blanket. So it's like an interesting dichotomy, right? So it's like a rough brick wall and then on top of that I have a vinyl plastic siding that's very common in these like newer developments because they're just trying to find cheap plastic materials so that they can build these homes really quickly. They almost feel like violent materials in some way.
SAM DINGMAN: Tell me, you used the word violent to describe those materials. Tell me what you mean by that.
VALERIA: I think architecture can be violent, right? If it's not meant to last, if it's not meant to secure. If it doesn't actually want you to be there forever, and that means that at some point you're going to have to leave again or be forced, to leave, or manipulated to leave. I feel like that in itself is a violent act, right? And it's interesting because our home has both of those materials. It's made out of the front, the red brick, and then in the back. It has that side paneling.
DINGMAN: If I'm hearing you correctly, so far your family has managed to hang on to their home in Columbia Heights. I'm getting the sense that you feel to some extent like you're in a race against the clock to try to get back there before there.
VALERIA: Yeah, I mean, I think I'm definitely in the race to get back. I think I've almost given up on trying to, I don't think it's my decision actually whether or not they should hold on or not. At the end of the day, this is my mom and dad's house, and they're the ones that have to retire soon. And so I think this show has kind of been almost therapeutic for me because I was like, "Wait, this isn't my home." This was their dream that they built together, and if they want to sell it to pay for their retirement or to move outside of D.C. or whatever their choice is. At the end of the day, it's not my choice. I put my goodbyes into this installation, and I think it kind of helped me deal with that honestly.
