Exhibition: El Nopal
- Note: This is during his first year at MCA; elections were happening
- During times of elections, realization with undocumented immigrants rise
- Fought back
- Trail of Dreams (2010)
- undocumented and unafraid
- walked from MIAMI to DC
- Battled with identity
- meso-american drawings (colonial times) tattoos on skin paintings
- honesty of origin with papermaking
- marks on paper
- maps
- roads to cross
- smuggle through
- cut maps which made veins (wasn't trying to be artistic)
- was just trying to understand routes
- which transformed into his BFA
- BFA brought attention
- Center Worker Justice
- midwest - fight for everyone's rights
- informal artist in residence (wage theft)
- immigrant art space (Iowa)
- power of process, not product
- aprons - put on, no identity
- silk screen to make an identity
- metaphoric stage
- when did you stop thinking in spanish?
- limboness
- "No one sends kids on boats unless the waters safer than land"
- immigrants treated like a natural disaster
- "a wave"
- "influx"
- "flood"
- lack of humanity
- Nets, fences, borders, maps
- conclusion of immigration
- "Can I create my own walls" within his studio space
- Body of work
- sense of home
This had to be one of the most emotional lectures I've gone to at MCA because of how raw the subject was.
