2025

A reflection on the immigrant experience—the process of acculturation, of shaping a new identity while holding on to fragments of another life. This project room evokes the feeling shared by many immigrants of living between worlds, where the person we once were may no longer exist on this side.

Someone Once Told Me the Grass is Much Greener
A wood picket fence shaped like the U.S.–Mexico border wall. The installation reflects on the notion of a barrier that protects private property—with individual owners—from those who wish to enter… or exit. It alludes to the picket-fenced American Dream as yet another form of separation. For an immigrant, the border is a hard line that cannot be crossed: if you are undocumented or deemed “illegal,” crossing that fence means being forced to choose a side, one you can never return from. Within the gallery, the installation disrupts the natural flow of movement, evoking what it feels like to encounter a physical barrier in a space that would otherwise circulate freely. To see the other two pieces in this room, the viewer needed to exit and enter through the opposite door of the gallery.

 

14.5210288, -90.542066
When you immigrate to a new place, you must create a new you to survive the old you, who was left behind. As this transformation unfolds, memory begins to reshape the image of where you came from. This piece uses the context of live-paint landscape to develop a view of my hometown in Guatemala (which I haven't seen in almost 10 year now). For me the only way to see an image if where I grew up is through a Google Maps image, this action satirizes how territory is perceived from afar—filtered through time and corporate-controlled digital tools—and how those very tools can become landscapes of their own. Landscape oil painting carries a history of colonization, like those explorers who went to third world countries to paint exotic landscapes and civilizations that never existed, but displayed to declare, “this is what we saw.” On the other side of this fence, these images are “poverty porn” – sensationalizing the global south to remind us how fortunate we are to belong
to the promise of the American dream.
 

Chafero
It alludes to the practice of obtaining a fake ID and Social Security number in order to work, to live, and to belong. These IDs, produced by an immigrant vendor, speak to the shift in identity many immigrants undergo. It is a transformation that is sometimes chosen, but more often a mechanism for survival. They feature the names of all U.S. presidents paired with the artist’s photograph, underscoring our presence regardless of who is in power.. we've always been here.​ Changing your name from José to Joe becomes a kind of cloak, a way to disappear, to blend in, and to avoid standing out. We have always been here, building empires with our bare hands, existing in plain sight yet often reduced to anonymity.