Migratory Land Knowledges
Excavating knowledges within anthropological biocultural archives becomes the materiality that Isidro Pérez García utilizes to forge relationships to the land, surpassing the boundaries of the settler colonialist concept of legal citizenship. Pérez García, a member of the undoc+[1] community, is deeply aware of what an immigrant leaves behind upon migrating—this body of work contests human relations to the land beyond contemporary border formations.
The material of the artworks found within this exhibition is directly sourced in Southern California, utilizing ancestral techniques from a time before the contemporary borders of Mexico and the United States, which are what we know today. In Perez Garcia’s own words, “Maguey plants from my neighborhood [Santa Ana], Tule from Newport and Cochinilla from Riverside,” all-natural elements that can be found on both sides of the border and which are shared by both nations despite neoliberal geopolitics, and beyond the confines of citizenship’s social construct of belonging to a demarcated nation project.
Many immigrants carry within them inherent knowledge that is obfuscated upon arrival to the host nation as they become integral and are absorbed by new economies. Isidro Pérez García’s work serves as a reminder of the interconnectedness of land beyond passports, citizenship, bureaucracy, settler colonialism, and the taxing economies that distance immigrants away from their ancestral knowledge. Migratory Land Knowledges is a visual invitation to connect to land and nature beyond political or geographical boundaries.
[1] Undoc+: currently or formerly undocumented.
Curated by Erika Hirugami, MA. MAAB. MPhil.
Founder & CEO of CuratorLove • Co-founder of UNDOC+Collective
“I am interested in what we leave behind when we cross borders.”
