De Esperanza Y De Locura/Of Hope and Madness

Migration is beautiful

 
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De Esperanza Y De Locura closed but it has stayed with me: I find myself ruminating over pieces I saw there in the way that I run my thumb over a swatch of cloth, feeling the same small part again and again, for the pleasure of feeling it and, in feeling it, knowing it. So I re-begin this blog that was so close to my heart that I had to stop writing it with an exhibition that is no longer up but, I believe, still speaks.

Los Brincos

 
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This show pulled together several artists-- Erika Harrsch, Miguel Luciano, Esperanza Mayobre, Omar Pimienta, Favianna Rodriguez and Judi Werthein--on the topic of migration. Though none of the pieces were collaborative, the resounding theme across the show was one of flight. There were kites and butterflies, most particularly the Monarch butterfly—which, because it migrates between México and North America and takes several generations for each migration, is an apt symbol for Mexican-Americans—altered passports and paper currency that invoked dreams of the ease of motion across borders that butterflies have. Collectively, the exhibition set about imagining a new geopolitical geography, erasing limitations and exploring the freedom of flight, of superseding borders.

  
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Pimiento, Harrsch and Wertheins’ installations all directly addressed the politics and physical limits of the borders. Pimiento works primarily with expired passports, which he takes and alters, granting the holder citizenship to Colonia Libertad in Tijuana. His simple inclusion of all into the Colonia defined by transition and passage extends the reach of Colonia Libertad to all the places in the world where Libertad citizens reside and grants the holder movement to move freely across all the earth’s landmasses. While Pimiento imagines passage into a borderless world, Harrsch sets forth a united North America, a borderless union of Canada, the United States and Mexico, “similar to NAFTA yet, in this case, actually providing equal social, political and economic benefits to all citizens of these regions.” She, like, Pimiento, also designs passports; hers, however, are embossed with a monarch butterfly, as is her flag of The United States of North America. Her installation features a series of passports mounted on the wall with history, law and hopes of her fictional land inscribed on them as well as a “Wheel of Fortune,” which attendees could spin to determine if and how they could pass, with the potential to land on illegal alien, non-citizen, caution, try again, citizen, you are not eligible.

 
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Werthein’s “Los Brincos” was one of my favorite pieces here. She created the shoes (for that is what Los Brincos are: a pair of shoes in the likes of Air Jordans—meaning, “the jumps,” the athletic shoes play on the high cost and coveted status of some athletic shoes) specifically for a pathless journey through the desert: they come equipped with compass, flashlight, map of crossing-routes on the bottome and painkillers in case of injury. She designed them toe-forward towards the U.S.: the Aztec eagle is embroidered on the heel and the American eagle on the front. She sold them in San Diego and NYC galleries for 215 dollars and distributed them for free to migrants.

United States of North America-Passport Installation

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Rodriguez, Luciano and Harsch, in another piece, all literally used wings in their pieces. Rodriguez created “Migration is Beautiful,” a mural of butterflies flying upwards and out from three children. It comes with a poster featuring a single butterfly, based on the monarch butterfly, but the markings, in this case, outline faces. Hers is a celebration of the “beauty, pride and resilience” of migrants. Luciano, with his “Dreamer Kites” performs a similar celebration. He used images of Dreamers—students who are undocumented but wish to study—, made kites out of them and mounted them from the ceiling, literally giving them wings.

Cerca de la Cerca

In Cerca de la Cerca, the border fence that divides Mexico and the United States is at the center. Maria Teresa Fernandez, a Mexican photographer now living in San Diego, photographed the fence over. Through her work, the function of the fence in people's lives becomes clear: its a obstacle to overcome to those for whom the American Dream pulls at; an ever more fortified barrier to stanch the flow of people coming in; a divider of people.

At UCSC, Cerca de la Cerca exhibition covers the walls of two rooms. Fernandez has been careful to capture all aspects of the fence, and organized the exhibition accordingly.

The first groupings of untitled photographs capture the fence alone: first as a long corroded metal fence that extends into the Pacific ocean, a close up of the corrosion of the fence and through a hole in it, a landscape of San Diego to the other side, and then a series of images in which it is unclear from which side we look over or through or at the fence from, but in each, the texture and colors of metal striping away are tangible.

With the introduction of heightened surveillance to reduce border crossings with Operation Gatekeeper in 1994, migrants have been forced to cross the border through the harsh desert to the east and many more people die in their attempt. In response, along the Mexican side of the border fence, alters crop up like nightmarish blooms. The alters are made in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos alters, yet these are replenished year round. They yearn for the missing and gone, or list the dead found and never identified, they commemorate those who have died and seem to beg the fence itself for relief. In these alters, the struggle, the tragedy, the hope and desperation and powerlessness literally hang off the fence in alters colored like celebration. These photographs explode with brilliant colors and are full of roses, marigolds, giant tissue paper flowers and wreaths.

Murals intersperse the alters along the southern side of the border fence. This art encourages people across, with statements like, "Bienvenidos al sueno americana" or painted silhouettes of men climbing over, even while others make a clear statement to the death threat the new wall is to those who would cross over. Painted blood seeps across a landscape in one mural; in another, Death stands at a gate between the US and Mexico.

It appears that people live right up alongside the border fence in Mexico: it is a barrier to turn into a weeping wall, a protest wall, a wall to hang your hopes and anger and desperation on, yes, but Fernandez has also presented images of trash blown up in piles along the wall and towns that abruptly stop in the presence of the wall. The collection of images from the Mexican side of the border reveal a vitality that is hemmed in only physically by the fence.

In contrast, the images of the U.S. side of the border fence are spare. Urban development can be seen in the distance, but they stop well north of the fence. The hilly, arid terrain stops shy of the second barrier fence by a dirt road that runs along the fence. In one photograph, the double fence, outfitted with spotlights and lookout towers, seem to race along the curving landscape.

After establishing the lay of the land, Fernandez introduces the people that live on and near the border and reveals the delicate nature of the relationships that often straddle the border. Before Friendship Park (in San Diego, a point where people could visit across the border fence) was closed down, Fernandez photographed a series of meetings. In one, family and friends picnic, but they sit separated by the fence, and talk through slats. In another, a father and daughter visit their family, who are obscured by the fence. People kiss, children are lifted through, adults reach their hands through to touch the people on the other side. In this series, the sacrifices that people make to cross the border reveal the intensity of the desire to try and make a better life.

Against this, Fernandez posits the U.S. Military personnel patrolling the border. The men are completely outfited with goggles, helmets vests and guns as they work to shore up the permeability of the fence. At work, these men give U.S. policy an unforgiving and inflexible face, especially when the next grouping of images are of people climbing over the fence. One man uses and alter as a ladder and carries little else but the ragged shirt and pants he wears. He is no threat to the Border Patrol.

With Cerca de la Cerca, Fernandez highlights the permeability and mortality of the fence by focusing on the corroded holes and barnacles growing on it and then mirroring this disintegration in the photographs of Mexican murals depicting men tearing down the fence. She creates compassion and humanity on the Mexican side of the fence, while making out the US side to be desolate, a effect heightened by the brilliant colors of the fence art against the drab military colors of both the uniforms and land of the US.

Ecdisis at Galeria de la Raza

Ana Teresa Fernadez recently exhibited Ecdisis at Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco's Mission District. Ecdisis was an overwhelmingly forlorn exhibition; the gallery space was largely left open, and the walls, bare, except for one, which she covered in lush red velvet and then hung with milagros (literally, miracles, but milagro also refers to charm-like offerings to a particular saint to keep the petitioner's need in mind) all over it.

Fernandez began Ecdisis to respond to the murders and continued disappearances of the women of Ciudad Juarez, the border town that sits opposite El Paso, Texas, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. After spending time in Juarez, Fernandez wanted not to replicate the continuing atrocities there, but to create something alluring. For her subject, she chose the orphans left behind.

Fernandez worked with orphaned girls both in San Francsico and Juarez to create her exhibition. She first made plaster casts of their bodies from which she made a mold to cast the final resin form of the sculptures. While the resin was still soft, Fernandez she pressed broken glass into the forms of the girls, delineating the fall of hair and folds of their clothes. She chose to use broken glass because she wanted to use something from the urban environment from where these girls come from, where broken glass lines the streets. "I let the terrain influence my work. There is a beauty and preciousness of glass but it is untouchable...I wanted to give the girls protection," Fernandez said.

The resulting figures are untouchable, but less from the sharp edges of the broken glass than the ethereal quality given them by the backlighting that light up their little bodies and reflect off the shards of glass. Fernandez situated the glowing figures around the gallery so that each seemed very much alone. In the end, the figures seem like the loneliest angelitas ever.

--Michelle