A First, Making Undocumented Artists Visible at Brooklyn Museum
Surprisingly, no major art museum in New York has ever platformed a conversation on undocumented artists—immigrant artists who do not hold a valid visa, immigration documentation, or legal immigration status. With increased hostility toward immigrants through the creation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration as a recurring important election issue, and the rise of political art it was about time to carve out space for undocumented artists to be heard in a museum setting. Held at Brooklyn Museum on the museum’s First Saturday in October, The Immigrant Artist Biennial’s roundtable discussion entitled “Undocumented Artists: The Politics of Visibility” platforming undocumented and formerly undocumented artists drew a full house.
The panel centered on three artists Ana Armengod, Raul De Lara, and Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez, who performed at the Brooklyn Museum for the opening of TIAB 2020: Here Together, as well as immigration lawyer Annie J. Wang who presented their work and stories. Except for the panel’s moderator TIAB co-curator and associate director Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, everyone on the stage was currently or formerly undocumented. Integral in its organization was also danilo machado, formerly undocumented, who serves as producer of public programs at the museum. “I have never felt this seen, understood, and comfortable during a talk,” De Lara commented as Ekstrand navigated the uncharted territory of making visible stories that are most often shared intimately.
The conversation began with a lecture-style presentation by the artists on their work. In Núñez’s choreography, bodies, like tornadoes, rotate and liberate themselves from the spatial limitations. The wooden sculptures by Raul De Lara incorporate natural motifs such as cacti, as well as agrarian instruments or chains that constitute man-made interventions onto nature. Armengod’s touching cinematic language and documentary-film-like interview style intimately show the raw struggles of longing, nostalgia, and rootlessness that characterize an undocumented immigrant’s state of being. Seeing these works after Ekstrand introduced the conversation’s main themes of undocumented artists moving in and out of visibility—wanting to stay hidden from the authorities but present in artistic circles—-, coming to terms with remaining in the country and the risks that might hold for themselves and their families I connected the work with each artist’s personal experience and their resilience.
The only non-artist, Wang, showed old photographs of her immigrant family, recounted a story of self-discovery and gradual understanding of what it means to spend one’s formative years in a nation that does not fully recognize people’s legal rights or residential status. Her father had moved the family to the United States for a position and when it ended they remained in the country. So, Wang found herself without immigration status as a high schooler.
I appreciated this structure of allowing each speaker to tell their own stories first: on one hand, they come together as individuals who fully understand what it means to be “undocumented”; on the other hand, they have drastically different stories whose heterogeneity is to be recognized. Raul De Lara came to the United States as a child and is a DACA recipient (a status that is consistently at risk of being undone), Núñez recently reached a new point in his journey of becoming a naturalized citizen, and Armengod, hailing the violent region of Mazatlán in Mexico, is currently working on recording the stories of other undocumented people. With immigrants, while some of them experience a middle-class life and course of education, others may face incarceration and come face-to-face with systems of violent policing and trafficking. All of these courses of life would be valid—their anxieties, limitations, and modes of existence.
Although Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven started to bring the issue of undocumented artists to an institutional setting as it centered on undocumented workers and the artist Maravilla’s own story, the roundtable organized by TIAB was a first. As a foreign national who has been residing in the US away from my parents since the age of 13, I resonate deeply with some of the points brought up, in art as well as in life. Existing research has proven that the “dichotomy between ‘felons’ and ‘families’—to argue that while the discursive treatment of immigrant populations as ‘families’ accompanies efforts to win more inclusive or integrationist reforms, the discursive treatment of immigrant populations as ‘felons’ or ‘criminals’ constructs migration as a criminal anomaly at the same time that U.S. immigration policies weave a criminal labyrinth—both of which contribute to the criminalization of undocumented populations and Latinos more broadly.
Armengod mentions that leisure is a luxury that many immigrants do not get to enjoy, which have seen time and time again through my friends who are creatives. During my time as a stage manager, an actor’s schedule was exceedingly difficult to work with, so eventually I had to sit him down and ask him why. Turns out he was doing five different plays at the same time—some roles more minor than others, but still, a shocking and nearly impossible undertaking for an actor who has to commute all around Manhattan, remember lines and blocking, and be able to act well enough for him to be rehired. Before you judge him for how artistic integrity might be compromised as a result of the hustling, understand that many, if not most, immigrant workers are dealing with a contracted and limited time frame, and A LOT of anxiety regarding what their next steps are. It is difficult to plan a future with a significant other or speak about a dream degree or job that you would like to attain. As is echoed by Armengod, hustling oftentimes does not feel like a choice. On one hand, there is the constant pressure to quickly build up your CV within a certain time frame. On the other hand, the paperwork required to renew your visa and the immense sense of uncertainty can be very, very overwhelming even for the most resilient of souls.
Sometimes we cannot understand visibility without looking into invisibility or hypervisibility. As the talk showed, undocumented artists must often fly under the radar, however, some organizations do look out for them. Define American for instance, who sponsored the talk, and offer grants to undocumented and immigrant artists. Armengod is an alumnus. And, the American Immigration Council, a research, lobby, and advocacy organization, saw the importance of adding an artistic dimension to their programming as co-sponsors of the event. Many undocumented artists are excluded from residency, grant, and exhibition opportunities due to documentation requirements, however, as the artists expressed organizations can change their processes to be more inclusive. These organizations can advise on solutions. From the audience, Brooklyn Arts Council’s executive director Rasu Jilana applauded the artists and TIAB while TIAB artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer encouraged them to speak to our representatives.
As the first U.S. laureate poet of Mexican descent Juan Felipe Herrera wrote: “Every day we get more illegal, yet the peach tree still rises & falls with fruit & without.” There is much room for our systems to be kinder, more supportive, and more humane.
Undocumented Artists: The Politics of Visibility moderated by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand featuring Ana Armengod, Raul De Lara, Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez, and Annie J. Wang was held Saturday, October 7, 2023, 6–7:30 pm at the Brooklyn Museum.
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