Ink on paper, 59 x 114.5 inches
There were signs,
tracks, tolls, pleas.
Mirage of the Magi mocks the hysterical hype of ‘invasions,’ ‘terrorists’ and ‘bad people’ at the border. Instead, spirits riding camels bring gifts to fore. They are distinguished ‘terrorists’ from the Middle East, leading a Central American Caravan. They have journeyed to where the star stops—at the border. Barely visible in the distance, ‘hordes’ of immigrant day laborers breach the barricade to tend crops for below poverty wages without job security, benefits or the protection of labor laws. The ghostly wall behind them becomes a backdrop for those who actually cultivate our sustenance.
Mirage of the Magi was included in Somewhere Over the Border at the Allcott Gallery at UNC Chapel Hill, February 10 – March 8, 2019
Detail of Black Ribboned Woman
Detail
Detail of laborers
Ink on unframed paper, 59 x 114.5 inches
Swift from the whirlwinds of indefinite chaos comes a caravan—a rude, discordant, shapeless mass with a heap of attendant spirits.
Mist of Magi is part of the series Somewhere Over the Border that examines the state of statelessness that defines ‘refugee.’ Refugees are not born but created out of dire circumstances typically resulting from systemic exploitation, economic destitution, and the upheavals of war and famine. The displaced are frequently portrayed as stripped of culture, connection, profession and the ability to care for each other or themselves. These works depict migrants in their strength-possessing a past and dreaming a future.
Trust in Jesus detail
Ammo detail
Jaguar mask detail
Ink on paper, 54.75 x 58.5 inches
Sanguine faces
in florid fields.
Florid tales with
sanguine knives that
cut stem from base,
without damage
to the product.
Detail of helmet
Ink on paper, 42.5 x 91 inches
Fear the landscaper.
The cucumber workers are having a field day.
Detail of pruner
Detail of bird
Ink on paper, 42.5 x 91 inches
Ink on paper, 43.5 x 38.5 inches
Mask detail
Detail of ICE
Ink on Paper, 30.5 x 43.75 inches
by Blas Manuel De Luna
They had hit Ruben
with the high beams, had blinded
him so that the van
he was driving, full of Mexicans
going to pick tomatoes,
would have to stop. Ruben spun
-
the van into an irrigation ditch,
spun the five-year-old me awake
to immigration officers,
their batons already out,
already looking for the soft spots on the body,
to my mother being handcuffed
and dragged to a van, to my father
trying to show them our green cards.
-
They let us go. But Alvaro
was going back.
So was his brother Fernando.
So was their sister Sonia. Their mother
did not escape,
and so was going back. Their father
was somewhere in the field,
and was free. There were no great truths
-
revealed to me then. No wisdom
given to me by anyone. I was a child
who had seen what a piece of polished wood
could do to a face, who had seen his father
about to lose the one he loved, who had lost
some friends who would never return,
who, later that morning, bent
to the earth and went to work."
-
From Bent to the Earth, © 2006 by Blas Manuel De Luna, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Detail of conquistador helmet
ink on paper, 44 x 36 inches
Fear the landscaper.
The cucumber workers are having a field day.
Ink on paper, 42 x 90 inches
Incarcerated girls sleep in the forced sorority of isolation, separated from their parents seeking asylum at the border.
Their patterned bedding refers to the jaguar in Aztec and Mayan mythology, a being of the stars and the earth, alternately representing a brave warrior or ruler of the underworld; the night sun and darkness; power, ferocity, and valor; and the power to face one's fears or confront one's enemies.
Paper chains of faceless human figures cast shadows in the cinder block room. The child in the lower bunk covers her face with laundry as lights remain on throughout the night in detention centers. Misidentification and loss of identity are reflected in the mirroring of the numerical stenciling of 906 and 906 on the bunk beds. That anonymity is resisted with possessions carried for months on migrant journeys, often across deserts and swamps, including clothing, hand washed underwear drying on iron railings, religious cards, beaded necklaces and bracelets, and a plastic toy plant set on rungs of bunkbed ladders.
Detail of child in the lower bunk covering her face with laundry as lights remain on throughout the night in detention centers.
Ink on paper, 42 x 90 inches
Detail of lower bunk
Detail of items for passage. Ink on paper.
Center detail
Upper left corner detail
Helmet detail
Ink on paper, 43.5 x 34.5 inches
Detail of conquistador helmet
Detail of picking peppers
Ink on paper, 42.5 x 91 inches
Psalm
By Wisława Szymborska (trs. Joanna Trzeciak)
How leaky are the borders of man-made states!
How many clouds float over them scot-free,
how much desert sand sifts from country to country,
how many mountain pebbles roll onto foreign turf
in provocative leaps!
Need I cite each and every bird as it flies,
or alights, as now, on the lowered gate?
Even if it be a sparrow—its tail is abroad,
thought its beak is still home. As if that weren’t enough—it keeps fidgeting!
Out of countless insects I will single out the ant,
who, between the guard’s left and right boots,
feels unobliged to answer questions of origin and destination.
If only this whole mess could be seen at once in detail
on every continent!
Isn’t that a privet on the opposite bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
Who else but the squid, brazenly long-armed,
would violate the sacred territorial waters?
How can we speak of any semblance of order
when we can’t rearrange the stars
to know which one shines for whom?
Not to mention the reprehensible spreading of fog!
Or the dusting of the steppe over its entire range
as though it weren’t split in two!
Or voices carried over accommodating air waves:
summoning squeals and suggestive gurgles!
Only what’s human can be truly alien.
The rest is mixed forest, undermining moles, and wind.
Detail of black hand
Detail of Cyclops trailed by sheep
Detail of sheep muzzle with Aztec reins
Displaced and stateless peoples are often seen as stripped of culture, connection, profession and the ability to care for each other or themselves. Somewhere Over the Border depicts migrants in their strength—possessing a past and dreaming a future. Children, separated from their relatives by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol Agents, invert the usual power dynamic. Their masks, attire and postures draw upon a rich and self-sufficient culture. Mayan and Aztec iconography abounds, invoking the power of the Mesoamerican god Tezcatlipoca, associated with the night sky and winds, hurricanes, enmity, discord, divination, sorcery and strife. In creation myths, Tezcatlipoca is often shown with his lost right foot replaced with an obsidian mirror.
Channeling night and the force of gales, the children become gods, tossing their powerless would-be captors on a parachute that becomes the heavens. Some agents wear flower-patterned fatigues; their scopes and surveillance gear are aimless. Others become Mexican Lucha libre pro-wrestlers in tights and tattoos, caught and tethered with beaded friendship bracelets. The children’s attire grants agency and promises transport—imprinted with sea creatures and freight trains colloquially known as ‘La Bestia’ (The Beast)—that have carried them, in dream or reality.
Central detail
Heavy children
tugged, then didn’t,
along the way.
Detail of mask
Detail of conch shell
Detail
Ink on paper, 42 x 39 inches
In Ocean Vuong’s novel On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, the narrator’s immigrant parents, following a rural Vietnamese tradition of naming a child for something so worthless that the evil spirits might pass over the house and spare him, call him Little Dog.
Ink on two pieces of paper, 42 x 91 inches each
Deep in the heavy metal mines
Mercury sends mixed signals.
Tremble.
Stay.
Quarry to
quarantine,
you won’t find
anyone,
anymore,
with that name.
Left half: 42 x 91 inches
Right half, 42 x 91 inches
Detail: Oversight
Detail: Double Consciousness
Detail: Talisman
Detail: Process of Denial
Detail: Night Vision Warrants
Detail: Squeeze Factors
Detail: In some respects egalitarian
Detail: Fear of Nostalgia
Detail: Masked gunmen
Detail: Mining Pipes Distributing Toxins
Detail: No Aid to Central American Northern Triangle Logo
Ink on Talas paper, 55.5 x 55.5 inches
Ink on paper, 54 x 114 inches
Fierce, you came,
determined,
undaunted.
My thumbprints
look funny
if humble
Detail of four riders
Detail of camel head
Detail of spurs
Ink on paper
Ink on paper, 43 x 38 inches
Detail of rider
Detail of camel head
Ink and wax on paper, 43.5 x 38.5 inchess
The wise men
traveled by starlight.
They didn’t offer
toothbrushes,
soap or food.
Detail