Gouache on Paper 12"x12" | Commissioned by Culture Strike
A visual collaboration with a letter written by a Honduran mother who is being kept at Karnes County Detention Center with her younger son after attempting to cross the border to be re-united with her family. Despite the traumatic and abusive conditions she faces at Karnes, she and her younger son reach across the US/Mexico Border to join hands with her older son who made it to Los Angeles. Their bodies are preserved with the light of a million stars, representing the millions of mothers, fathers, and children throughout history who attempt to cross the border into the US. Migrants risk enormous loss in the optimism of securing family and community in a new country. For as long as she lives, the Honduran mother, and millions others, reach for each other and form constellations in the night despite the borders, detainments, and abuse of the US. This image is a tribute to their undefeatable optimism and resilience.
Read the original letter here.
This illustration is part of Culture Strike's Visions From Inside project: a series of art that illuminates letters from undocumented women and children kept at family detention centers for undocumented immigrants along the US/Mexico Border.
Published in The Huffington Post, Latina, Medium Italy, Feministing, El Diario NY, UCLA Chicano Studies Central American Refugees In Detention Conference (Program Cover), When We Fight We Win (The New Press) and the East Bay Express (front cover).
Exhibited in the Church Center of the UN (NYC), The Palais De Nations of the UN in Geneva, SF LGBTQ Center as part of Visions From The Inside.
A visual collaboration with a letter written by a Honduran mother who is being kept at Karnes County Detention Center with her younger son after attempting to cross the border to be re-united with her family. Despite the traumatic and abusive conditions she faces at Karnes, she and her younger son reach across the US/Mexico Border to join hands with her older son who made it to Los Angeles. Their bodies are preserved with the light of a million stars, representing the millions of mothers, fathers, and children throughout history who attempt to cross the border into the US. Migrants risk enormous loss in the optimism of securing family and community in a new country. For as long as she lives, the Honduran mother, and millions others, reach for each other and form constellations in the night despite the borders, detainments, and abuse of the US. This image is a tribute to their undefeatable optimism and resilience.
Read the original letter here.
This illustration is part of Culture Strike's Visions From Inside project: a series of art that illuminates letters from undocumented women and children kept at family detention centers for undocumented immigrants along the US/Mexico Border.
Published in The Huffington Post, Latina, Medium Italy, Feministing, El Diario NY, UCLA Chicano Studies Central American Refugees In Detention Conference (Program Cover), When We Fight We Win (The New Press) and the East Bay Express (front cover).
Exhibited in the Church Center of the UN (NYC), The Palais De Nations of the UN in Geneva, SF LGBTQ Center as part of Visions From The Inside.
