Month: June 2019

Consider the migrant experience – the human experience – in the US/Mexico border region expressed in small- and large-scale visual images.

Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States at the Princeton Art Museum. Retablos, also known as ex-votos are small (typically) tin paintings depicting miraculous interventions into personal tragedies and misfortune.

Karlito Miller Espinosa, an internationally renowned conceptual artist and 2019 graduate of the MFA program at the University of Arizona, has focused on border issues in a number of large-scale installations. Have a look here.

This mural cycle was painted by faculty and students from the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), Mexico, 1958-59. The cycle is located in the interior courtyard of the Damián Carmona Boarding School in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The school was founded in the 19^th century for the education of children of local mine and farm workers – it is still operating and continues to serve a very important community service.

You can see that the student painters had certainly looked very carefully at the work of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros and José Clemente Orozco in Mexico City!

A group of us participating in the two-day, bi-national conference on Shared Cultural Heritage in June, 2019 at the Colegio the San Luis Potosí (México) were treated to a tour of the school and mural. The various scenes in the mural depict historical figures, local cultural practices, as well as activities of students and teachers at the school.

• 

• 

•