North Texas artists are using their paintings, sculptures and performances to speak out about immigration issues.
As people across the country protest against the surge in ICE activity, including the unlawful and violent arrest of U.S. citizens, many artists are sharing their thoughts and feelings through their work.
Want to follow along? Here are some of the North Texas artists who are making or have made art about immigration:
Eliana Miranda
This Oak Cliff artist has created work about climate migration and the U.S.-Mexico border for over a decade. Last year, she said the president’s second term has motivated her to lean into her work given the executive orders on immigration and climate change.
One of her pieces “Que Vamos Hacer” will be featured at the Latino Cultural Center’s upcoming exhibition “The Journey North: Hope, Labor and Culture” which is open until Feb. 27. The acrylic painting features silhouetted figures, a mother and her two children, migrating due to rising heat.
In 2016, she created the painting “Welcome” about detention centers. The painting features the dangling legs of immigrants who are wearing ankle monitors.
“This is what I've always made work about. I've made work about difficult things that people don't want to talk about or people don’t want to show work about,” she said.
Tina Medina
Over the years, multidisciplinary artist Tina Medina has created artwork telling stories about migration, identity and displacement among other themes. She incorporates objects like cornhusks, family photos and fabrics to create collages, paintings, videos, installations and performances.
In 2022, she created the movement-based performance “La Enorme Distancia” with collaborator Sara Herrera. It was inspired by the classic Mexican song with a title that translates to “The Enormous Distance.” The work speaks to the building of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and the physical and symbolic distances that borders create.
Through slow, mirrored movements with a piece of fabric between them, Herrera and Medina embodied the distance between loved ones due to immigration policies.
“As a woman of Mexican Indigenous ancestry born in the United States, I feel a deep responsibility to create art that addresses current issues like immigration through the perspectives and lived experiences of Mexican ancestry,” Medina said. “Our continued struggle to exist and be recognized within this country drives me to represent those who have endured racism, bigotry, and xenophobia.”
Gerardo Robles
Robles, a first generation Mexican-American, creates paintings exploring the experiences of immigrants. His series “Somos” is about the sacrifices immigrants make as they pursue the American Dream.
“Through the use of personal family images, home-videos, and other source materials, I intend to give my audience a different perspective of who we are as a people,” Robles writes on his personal website.
The artist uses traditional painting methods, wall compound, fabric and other mediums in his work. In the series, Robles paints halos around each of the figures depicting the virtuousness of ordinary actions and uplifting each of their stories as people who often experience prejudice.
Bernardo Vallarino
The Colombian-American mixed media sculptor has explored issues of migration and violence in his artwork.
In 2018, he debuted a series of sculptures and installations at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center which speaks to our perceptions of refugees and immigrants.
Some of the works included in the series are large banners that have Spanish phrases like “No Mas,” and “Tu y Yo.” Upon closer inspection, viewers can see the words are made of tiny stamps of human figures.
Valerino said he created the work in this way to express how we’re not seeing people as individuals.
“So just like the context of quote, unquote “refugees” as a whole, but when you closer, when you start studying the individual then you realize there’s something much more special about that individual,” he said in a 2018 interview with KERA.
