What Remains

Born out of the fault line of El Paso, one of the safest cities in the United States, and Ciudad Juarez, one of the world’s most dangerous, What Remains attempts to impart texture and nuance to the migrant experience and that of citizens of the borderlands who bear witness to the brutality inflicted on their kinfolk. The project provides windows, peering into and out from an ongoing global humanitarian crisis, assembled into a multimedia (photography, illustration, music, video, installation) and multidisciplinary (artistic, academic, activist) experience.

Grounded in nearly two decades of Monica Lozano’s photographic documentation of the migrant passage in El Paso/Juarez, the works in this exhibition – illustrations by Mabel Weber, printed matter by Iris Morales, an interactive educational space curated by Dr. Adriana Alvarez, and an ongoing community-generated sculpture – draw varied forms of expression together to more viscerally capture the entirety of the experience. What Remains imparts an understanding of the gravity of conditions that precipitate mass migration – from the act of making the perilous crossing, to the art of surviving what comes next. What Remains offers no solutions to the dire situation playing out on the Rio Grande, but rather points to the possibilities derived from bearing witness to the present, translating emotional data and applying this learning towards rehabilitative, integrative ways of supporting migrant communities and affecting public perception and policy.

What Remains is a labor of love, an invitation and a provocation, for us to collectively reassess the costs of extractive capitalism, acknowledge the migratory history of human beings and reaffirm basic values and rights of human existence.

Image detail: Monica Lozano, La Trenza, 2023, digital photograph. Courtesy of the artist