new acquisition

Nogales

by Erin Currier

web # 9871

Original Paintings

Mixed Media on panel

28"h x 40"w

Nogales & Lampedusa: This pair of paintings portrays two groups of migrants who are from opposite sides of the world, yet who find themselves in similar circumstances. The titles of both works are named for places: one a desert city on the Mexico-US Border, the other a Mediterranean village on a Sicilian island situated between Africa and Europe. Lampedusa is the purgatory for tens of thousands of African migrants who cross the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy, overcrowded rafts in hopes of gaining asylum and employment in Europe, but who are immediately held in detention awaiting deportation, or else who are turned away and sent back. Nogales is the purgatory of both migrants from Mexico and Central America who are caught attempting to cross the desert into the US looking for employment, and of people who have lived in the US for years-- some even parents of US citizen children-- who are nonetheless deported due to lack of documentation. During the present administration, more people have been deported from the US than ever before.
The two portraits, Lampedusa and Nogales, along with Uighurs in Bermuda, portray men who have crossed literal transnational borders, are intended to traverse our mental and psychological borders-- our oft-times fear-based ideas of "the other" or "the stranger"-- by revealing the commonalities of our humanity.