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Indepth Arts News:
"La Frontera : the Cultural Impact of Mexican Migration"
2010-10-08 until 2010-12-23
Museum of Contemporary Photography
Chicago, IL,
USA
The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) is pleased to announce the
exhibition La Frontera,, curated by MoCP Director Rod Slemmons, opening in October 2010.
The idea for this exhibition originated when MoCP Director Rod Slemmons served as a member
of the Mexican Community Roundtable of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He realized that
there were many layers and generations of migration and immigration present at the table, all with
varying agendas and degrees of mutual understanding and tolerance. He felt that these multiple
viewpoints were quite different from the simple, commonly held notions of immigration
promulgated by the news media in the U.S.
With experience working within arts communities in Mexico for 25 years, and familiarity with
photographers dealing with these issues in both the U.S. and Mexico, Slemmons created this
exhibition to explore the following layers of impact of immigration over time and in detail.
The exhibition addresses the dynamics of the border itself as the choke point, including Minute
Men, Border Patrol, and humanitarian groups. This section will primarily be drawn from the work
of David Taylor from Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Michael Hyatt from Tucson, Arizona. David
Taylor has just published a book titled Working the Line that records his extensive experience
with the Border Patrol.
La Frontera also explores the routes to the border in Mexico collectively called El Camino Real,
an ironic reference to the 17th century route from Mexico City to California. Some of these routes
are illegal and exploitive of the people desperately seeking work in the north. This situation is
exacerbated by the increasing volume of drug trafficking that is permanently changing the cultural
parameters of Mexico forever. David Rochkind contributes a strong image essay from his project
Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit.
Transformed communities on either side of the border are a focus as well. An example is the town
of West Liberty, Iowa, which has been photographed extensively by Andy Kropa. The town has
been home to Mexican farm workers since the 1940s, of whom almost all hail from the town of
Allende in the Mexican state of Durango. Unlike previous waves of immigrants from Europe in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries who had no desire to return, there is constant contact between
the two towns. A less-positive example of the effects of migration, especially of men looking for
work, is the town of San Miguel Amatilan in the state of Oaxaca. Here women have been forced
to take over traditional male occupations such as building houses of adobe, mainly because the
majority of the men have moved to the U.S. in search of work and have not come back. Marcela
Taboada contributes a project based on this town called Women of Clay.
La Frontera includes photographs from Chicago exploring the lives of families in different waves
of immigration who are now living in Pilsen, produced by Antonio Perez and Heriberto Quiroz.
The exhibition also addresses Mexican artists in the U.S. who attempt to escape the expectation
that they deal only with "Mexican themes," while they still experience being foreigners in a foreign
land. Juan Pacheco contributes a project called De Colores, and Yoshua Okón contributes an
installation about an imaginary factory on the border that "cans" laughter.
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