EXODUS
SEPTEMBER 2014–SEPTEMBER 25, 2015
soft opening, september 2014
|
Exodus is a photographic exhibition of the work of Julian Cardona that documents the forced modern-day exodus of people from Mexico to the United States. The exhibit covers Cardona’s work between 1997-2008. Using Juárez, Mexico as his model, Cardona’s images represent the fear and violence that plague many Mexican border towns. The images construct a visual narrative representative of the many untold stories of migrants who risked injury, attack, rape and death to cross the treacherous desert between Mexico and the United States. Cardona’s images capture migrants after they cross the border employed in backbreaking work in construction, agriculture, and other industries, but also families who hope to find the elusive “American dream.” Throughout this exhibit Julian Cardona provides an intimate window into the journey that countless people embark on in search of a better life.
|
Young men and boys from Southern Mexico light votive candles and pray for a safe crossing before leaving the Sonoran town of Altar. Soon they will be loaded into vans and trucks and ferried north toward La Línea (the border).
Celerina Vargas at her home in Eureka, California, with her American-born children Estrellita (far left), Odilia, and her five-month-old-niece, Joselyn. Celerina has five children, three of them born in Mexico.
The Great American Boycott. Los Angeles, California. May 1, 2006.
|
Sisters and friends at the funeral of 17-year-old Sagrario González, who was murdered in April 1998. On February 18, 2005, state police arrested José Luis Hernández Flores, a friend of Sagrario’s brother, and charged him with homicide. Hernández told the police that he had asked Sagrario to be his girlfriend but she turned him down. Later, he and a smuggler and another man kidnapped Sagrario, attacked her, and disposed of her body in Loma Blanca, a desert area in the Juárez Valley. May 1998.
A massive dumpsite in the Upper Altar Valley, Arizona. Undocumented immigrants meet representatives of their smugglers (coyotes) after a forty-mile walk through the desert. They are told to strip; dump their old clothes, packs, and jugs of water; and put on new, more “American”-looking clothes before traveling on to an urban stash house. April 2006.
|