Entre Ceuta y Gibraltar (nuG yaR)

Year: 2023

Medium: Screen Printing on Drywall

Size: 1/4 in. x 4 ft. x 8 ft.

    Based on my family’s immigration story, Entre Ceuta y Gibraltar is meant to evoke a sense of irony and incompleteness. The sculpture was conceptualized around my uncle’s migration to the United States. At seventeen, he departed from all his familiarities and illegally immigrated to America. His first home in the land of opportunity was Newark, New Jersey, 10.1 miles away from “El Capital del Mundo” (New York) and he lived on its front lawn.
    The piece is comprised of two main factors, the drywall, and the print. Drywall is a common construction material, alluding to the blue-collar work of immigrants. As both a reference to my uncle's story and Milton Glaser’s  “I Love NY” logo, the print depicts an outsider's perspective of the U.S. Through the repetitive use of tourist-like iconography, I underscore the obnoxious nature of the American dream, the compelling ideology that drives millions to immigrate.
    By hauling around the 8ft tall structure, I imbue the work with a performative aspect that reflects back to the piece’s subject matter. The drywall stands as a living memory of this physically demanding “performance”, revealing evidence of its relocations, its edges are bashed and peeling from the movement, placing, and scraping it’s endured. The prints also bear context, slowly degrading in quality to capture the tediousness of the printmaking process, my craftsmanship getting less precise with every print. The closer the piece came to its conclusion, the less controlled it became.
    Through the referential interplay, the piece approaches themes of exclusion, manual labor, generational burdens, and the American dream. The context of both the print and the drywall imply a sense of proximity, close enough to smell the American Dream but too far to reap its benefits, a sentiment understood by millions of immigrants in the United States.