Making Work Visible

A desire to examine my role as an artist trapped within a global economic system that defines the world in capitalist terms, has led me to connect my personal history to video and installation art. This is a three-part installation titled Chasing Threads Home, consisting of two handmade swimming pools and a five-minute video documentary. The video is essential to my artistic process, and I hope this component will be reviewed as part of my submission to the Labor Arts Contest. Please take a moment to watch the video here.

The clothing on the floor comes from a donation outlet warehouse that sells garments by the pound. I scrounged these bins for clothing made in Latin American countries affected by United States imperialism. My findings are displayed here: children’s clothes made in Guatemala, denim from Mexico, abandoned shirts from the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. My objective is to visually identify the way capitalism treats the other. These textiles remind me that the United States welcomes the labor of Latinx people into its economy, while simultaneously enforcing immigration policies that dehumanize working-class people of Hispanic origin.

I am a witness to the challenges my parents faced after immigrating here from Mexico. Through my art I expose these familial wounds. In 2014, my father could not afford to refill his heart medication and he passed away from a heart attack. The painting on the wall represents his struggles with debt, and how grief impacted my journey. Together, the two works in this installation create a mirror effect: the images loosely reflect each other to convey that the story of one individual is usually more than an isolated incident. When approached from a multinational context, local tragedies become amplified by systemic sociopolitical issues.