This exhibition draws its themes from Oceanside Public Library’s 2020 NEA Big Read novel choice Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea. This story of a quest for new solutions to old problems explores immigration and the people and places caught up in the U.S.-Mexico border wars with compassion, complexity, and humor. Urrea invites the reader to think of the border as more than a stark divide between nations by portraying a place of convergence where meaningful conversations, and even love, between cultures begins.
The tale follows native Sinaloan teenager Nayeli as she journeys from her village in Sinoloa with three friends to find the men who abandoned her village seeking work in the U.S. Her travels take her to Tijuana and San Diego, and ultimately deeper into the U.S. before she returns home.
"The work presented in this exhibition echoes her story by underscoring the chaotic breakdown of class and race structures after colonialism, territorialism, and human mobility. My studio practice is based in Tijuana and San Diego, and I employ found objects to forge new and poetic meanings around ethnic and gender identities, the ongoing circulation of culture and goods, and the possibilities of cultural hybridity. The concrete maps in this exhibition connect Nayeli’s journey with elastic slings, suggesting the bouncing and volatile changes in our borders. The embroidered imagery parallels the novel by taking serious political, economic, and migratory subjects with humor, stimulating reflections on our current status quo, metaphoric associations, and constructing new procedural semantics." –Griselda Rosas
This exhibition is in partnership with Oceanside Public Library. NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.
