MIGRATION, JUSTICE & BELONGING

Crossing & Displacement

Cross-ing El Río Grande, un memorial para los no identificados

  • 17 x 10 feet
  • 2015-2019
  • Withered Red willow branches, rosaries, red beads, and string

This work speaks about the journey of those who cross the border from Mexico into the United States in search for a better life, but who die before reaching habitable areas. There are hundreds of people every year that attempt to reach the American Dream and succumb to the elements. These people that die on their journey are sometimes never found, identified, or claimed. They don’t get to receive a proper burial. Each rosary in this installation symbolizes a death at the border and carries a prayer for every man, woman or child that has passed away in those circumstances.

AND ALL IT WAS FOUND WERE A KEY CHAIN, A WATCH NEXT TO SOME BONES

  • 11 x 15 in.
  • 2013
  • Etching, thread drawings and found objects

This work talks about migration to the United States specifically from south of the border. Head of households have been deported to their native countries after having made their livelihoods in the US. After being deported they decide to return, risking everything to be able to see their children again. A lot of them die in transit while attempting to reunite with their loved ones.

In the collection of The Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Forth Worth, TX.

MOJÁNDOSE (CROSSING) II

  • 21 x 27 in.
  • 2015
  • Etching, chine collé, thread drawings, relief and blind embossment.

This print reflects on the border between Mexico and the U.S. — a place shaped by movement, memory, and silence. It quietly traces the journey of migration from south to north, where every mark carries longing. Fragments of 17th- and 18th-century books in Spanish and English are sewn and chine collé into the surface — stitched histories layered with weight and meaning. A relief-printed figure drifts across the page, swimming through the Rio Grande. Over it all, a blind embossment of the Codex Mendoza lingers like a ghost — the quiet presence of histories that refuse to disappear.

In the collections of: The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC.; The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Forth Worth, TX;
The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX.; Digital Public Library of America. 
 

*Print co-published at Flatbed Press

CRUZADO (SETTLED IN)

  • 21 x 27 in.
  • 2015
  • Etching on copper, photopolymer gravure, blind embossment, chine cole and thread drawings.

Settled In speaks to what comes after the crossing — the quiet, complicated act of staying. The river is behind. The figure is gone. What remains are traces: language, memory, the weight of survival. Sewn fragments of 17th- and 18th-century texts in Spanish and English form the foundation — voices from colonial pasts stitched into the present. Chine collé binds them to the paper like layers of soil, history, and identity. A blind embossment of the Codex Mendoza floats across the surface, faint but insistent — a reminder that no settlement is ever without history. There is no body here, only presence. A life woven into a new landscape. Not fully seen, but undeniably there.

In the collections of: The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. ; The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Forth Worth, TX; The Blanton Museum of Art; Digital Public Library of America.
 
*Print co-published at Flatbed Press
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