Migración On View and On Minds at Menduina Schneider Gallery

Weaving Bridges and Bringing Down Walls is an important and intimate exhibition on migration, reminding its viewers that the world is rapidly changing. It is on display through February at San Pedro’s Menduina Schneider Gallery.

Humans set down roots and humans migrate. Both are innate. Yet, leaving our roots is sometimes  forced upon us, as in the case of refugees. This exhibition asks unforgivingly what circumstances make humans migrate and what are the conditions that attract them toward new regions and opportunities.

MS Gallery Curatorial text reads — “exhibitions that ‘dwell’ in one of the main problems of human existence are always understood better as a collective show.”

“Migration is mostly a monumental communal effort,” it continues. “A sea of people on the go, many times blindly and helplessly moving towards a promised land.”

Weaving Bridges and Bringing Down Walls was originally planned two years ago. The pandemic came and issued more delays but the exhibit was sustained via help from women throughout Latin America. Mónica Romero Dávila, print master and founder of the Taller Gráfico La Muñeca in Guadalajara, Mexico, gathered eight printmakers from her own studio. Together they created this project. Jandra Pagani/Voces del Faro (Voices from the Lighthouse is her surname), an Uruguayan curator and friend of artist-curator Allejandra Schneider, acted as liaison between MS Gallery and Dávila to help the exhibition finally make its way to the U.S.

The exhibition sheds necessary light on migration. Each of its 17 works tower in expression. Named for its subject, Migracion, linocut on paper by Delores Romero, haunts viewers upon entry to the gallery. A human skull in black and white fills its frame, supported both under and alongside by two hands, its front teeth and nose are missing. It becomes a perch for a red butterfly. Dark hollows where anatomy is gone become balanced by this soul’s own migration from one state to another, as from the chrysalis to a beautiful winged creature.

Sin fronteras, or ‘without borders,’ etching on paper by Marissela Esqueda, depicts a silhouetted line of three migrating elephants guided by the light of a golden hemisphere over tarred black earth. The massive land mammals know no borders, just as their similarly warm-blooded human relations intrinsically do not.

Mexico’s history of printmaking is the oldest in Latin America, with the first presses established there in the 16th century. The tradition has continued through to modern-day inspired by “the three greats” Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and more recently, Raul Anguiano. To see migration being depicted through this art form follows in this Mexican tradition.

All of the artists featured work in multiple mediums. MS curator Jorge Schneider said this is common in Mexico, to see artists who work in mysticism as well as technology, in murals and digital, or sculpture and poetry. The vast diversity within Mexico, derived from long-standing traditions, has allowed artistic expression to go in many directions in terms of inspiration and practice.

Bringing Down Walls 
Humans will see migration en masse through this century as the earth warms and strange weather patterns like El Niño multiply. Southern hemispheres are becoming hotter, more arid and rainfall and crop yields are decreasing. As refugees embark on the exodus from areas like the Middle East and North Africa into Europe and from Central America into the United States, we see an anti-immigrant backlash in these developed nations. An alternative is urgently called for as people will increasingly move from unlivable places towards those where they can survive and find hope.

Weaving Bridges and Bringing Down Walls speaks to this plight. It makes us think about the walls that have been erected and opens the mind to what the alternatives can be. Shown through nine women artists, curator Jorge Schneider writes “the artist strives to weave bridges in our collective mind, forcing us to demolish our preconceived walls.”

Weaving Bridges and Bringing Down Walls, Collective Show
Created by Taller La Muñeca director: Monica Romero Davila

Artists: Dolores Romero. Maru Valdez. Chapis Fregoso. Hana Sánchez Verea. Liliana Rizo. Marissela Esqueda. Claudiela Goya. Martha Orozco. Mónica Romero.
Time: Wednesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Details: For appointments 562-246-7915; www.msartgallery.com
Venue: MS Art Gallery: 366 West 7th Street, San Pedro