The Phoenix Center for the Arts hosted an art exhibit Wednesday showing ASU art students work narrating their diverse immigration journeys while hosting renowned Los Angeles-based artist Ramiro Gomez.
The students’ artwork dealt with themes such as invisibility, deportation, transience, and belonging, but it also evoked themes of hope, freedom, resilience, and celebration.
One student, Kenneth Velasquez, uses his piece to illustrate his family’s journey to the United States from El Salvador, but also to showcase the barrier between this country and his ancestral homeland.
The etching on tin foil, a traditional Mexican embossing technique called repujado, is the outline of El Salvador, seemingly disembodied from the rest of the world. It shows the means of transportation his family took to reach the U.S.
“The railroad tracks and the landing strip are supposed to show how my family came here,” said Velasquez. “How these modes of transportation mediate the way people come across [into the United States].”
The student artists are part of a class through Arizona State University called Facing Immigration, which examines the complexities of immigration through art. The pieces were painted cardboard as well as repujado.
Sijiao Xie is another student artist, originally from China. His repujado piece, titled “Roots and Routes” intricately features landmarks from various cities in which he’s lived, including his hometown in China as well as Seattle, London and Phoenix.
The theme of impermanence was central to the night’s events.
After guests were done chatting around the small exhibit, organizers directed guests up the stairs to listen to a presentation by Ramiro Gomez.
Gomez, who has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, NPR and more, is known mainly for his painted cardboard cutouts of domestic workers and manual laborers he leaves “Banksy style” in the posh neighborhoods of Beverly Hills.
His artwork draws attention to an uncomfortable reality: the manual and domestic labor of immigrants is critical to our nation’s survival, but the people are often overlooked and viewed as replaceable.
Gomez, whose parents are from Mexico, draws directly from his experiences as a nanny in Los Angeles caring for children of an upper-class family.
During his time as a nanny, he interacted frequently with the housekeepers and gardeners. “As a babysitter, I could move in and out of the house, but the gardeners…weren’t able to come into the house at all. And I started asking why.”
He revealed later on that the same gardener he referenced, named Candelario, had his truck stolen along with all his tools and equipment; essentially his whole livelihood.
He recounts another time when Delia, the family’s housekeeper whom he had become friends with, failed to show up one day, and never returned.
She had seemed so permanent to Gomez but was quickly replaced by the family who wouldn’t reveal what had happened to her.
“That’s a really difficult lesson for me as a person who’s working in this space that feels like a part of a family…but at the same time subject to abrupt disillusion as well,” said Gomez.
During the children’s nap time, Gomez would create his first pieces using magazines he found around the house.
One such piece was his take on a Rolex watch advertisement. In his amended version, he juxtaposes the expensive watch next to a meager $80 paycheck for a woman named “Maria.”
The name Maria figures prominently in Gomez’s work. It is the name of his mother, who works as a janitor at an elementary school in San Bernardino.
But Gomez said that the media didn’t seem to care to hear about his mother, who is getting older and may not have the funds to retire anytime soon.
“I would express to [the media] explicitly that there is a heart at the center of this project,” said Gomez. “My own mother, working at an elementary school…maintained our family. I would express that to news people and they would never want to go interview her.”
His goal is not only to reveal to the public the people who maintain the gardens and pools of the elite, but also for laborers “to see themselves elevated and reflected as art pieces.”
Charisse Jennas, an employee at ASU, connected personally with the artwork on display. Her family is from Jamaica, and while their immigrant experience was different in some ways from Gomez’s, they too felt a sense that they didn’t belong.
“Being accepted and even being seen in America was their struggle,” said Jennas.
The students’ artwork was sold off in a silent auction, and the students had decided that the money raised should benefit an immigrant rights group, according to organizers.
The organization that will receive the donations has not been decided, but will be announced shortly, said an organizer.
Contact the reporter at Madeline.Ackley@asu.edu.
Madeline is the community editor for Downtown Devil and is a senior studying at the Walter Cronkite School. She is a local freelance journalist who primarily covers politics, policing, immigration and business. In 2019, she won first place in her category in the national SPJ Mark of Excellence Awards for her reporting on deported veterans in Tijuana, Mexico with Cronkite News.
