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Mi Frontera

Papers will not grant me my freedom. Yet in America, citizenship is what permits my liberation. Mi Frontera began as an investigation of topography in the Indio Valley as I documented the Salton Sea. While I captured displaced objects among the landscape, buried emotions began blurring my consciousness. Barbed wire, abandoned essentials, and the preserved unhabitual terrain triggered suppressed memories I carried. I forced myself to connect with the landscape while I took self portraits, but all that surfaced was a yearning of belonging. At the age of five, my family illegally transported me across “La Frontera,” the Mexican-American border, with intentions of a prosperous future. This body of work helped me develop critical affirmations with my contact to the terrain. Mi Frontera metaphorically embodies the wounds I haul throughout my life, while I work to dismantle the fear of my status in the United States. With these images I share my experience and challenge viewers to join me as I navigate topics of migration, surveillance, sustainability, and displacement. Society values undocumented folx upon their immigration status therefore, I choose to rewrite this belief. Similarly to that of the forgotten toothbrush, tire, and plastic bag caught on barbed wire, I too once traveled across this terrain. A part of me misplaced, but certainly not forgotten. 

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