ARTIST STATEMENT

It’s been over 7 months since I left a big piece of my life on the border. As a migrant shelter connector for Abara | Borderland Connections, I’d connected with so many women and children that had migrated north from their home countries in a bid to escape severe physical harm and extortion. I remember their stories and with some I am fortunate enough to maintain invaluable friendships. Through them, I learned what courage really looks like. It is the impermeable resolve to protect your life and the lives of your children. It is an inextinguishable desire for them to have a better future and more opportunities than ones you’d been given earlier in life.

I created this piece as a commission for Abara this past year. It was inspired by a photo I saw from an El Paso journalist that I’d adapted to show the longing and barriers women face in family reunification. The peice depicts a central american woman and her young child because those are the central actors of migration story across the border. Political instability, climate change, and organized crime are just a few of the many factors forcing women and their families to flee the Northern Triangle. Their hands are seen reaching through the steel bars of the border fence to be met with the single hand of an invisible loved one. I wanted the scene to show the true intention of these families arriving at the border. When MPP took effect, we saw many journeys cut abruptly short and women and children became the most susceptible to violence and crime as they were forced to remain in unfamiliar border cities with limited access to resources and protection.

Even though it is a perceptibly melancholic scene, I hope to convey the strength of the woman and child, both equally having endured so much along the way to have made it this far in their journey.