{"id":3415,"date":"2025-07-08T19:32:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T19:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patriciaespinosa.com\/blog\/?p=3415"},"modified":"2025-10-21T14:22:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:22:13","slug":"nytimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patriciaespinosa.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/08\/nytimes\/","title":{"rendered":"For Some Immigrant Artists, This Is No Time to Retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The following is a transcript of the article published in The New York Times<\/em> on May 16, 2025, written by Tess Thackara. The article highlights the exhibition Te Amo Porque S.O.S. Pueblo<\/em> and features my piece Nunca Olvides Que Tienes Alas<\/em>. All photos are by Luis Corzo for The New York Times<\/em> and are shared here with credit and gratitude.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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An exhibition in the Bronx offers community support to Latino artists, undaunted by a hostile climate.<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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By<\/b><\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/span>Tess Thackara<\/b><\/span><\/b><\/p><\/div>

Published\u00a0May 16, 2025 (Updated\u00a0May 17, 2025)<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Ruddy Mejia was sitting in a compact studio in the South Bronx, putting the finishing touches on a set of small, brightly colored brass foil plates embossed with images of body parts.<\/p>

His take on popular Mexican religious charms, or \u201cmilagros,\u201d they draw from a tradition of toiling for hours to indent an image \u2014 a heart, leg or other body part that needs healing \u2014 into a plate of metal.<\/p>

They are about sacrificing \u201ctime, and your hands, in order to ask for a little prayer of help from beyond,\u201d said Mejia, one of the 34 artists, all but one of whom are Latino immigrants or children of immigrants, in a new exhibition, \u201c\u00a1Te Amo Porque S.O.S. Pueblo!,\u201d at the BronxArtSpace.<\/p>

The exhibition is intended as a celebration of immigrants in a time of crackdowns and deportations. It is also a form of outreach, offering access to legal resources and advocacy groups, and a chance to connect with other immigrant artists in the South Bronx, where the population is majority Latino and nearly one-third foreign-born.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cEmotions are running very high,\u201d Mejia, 36, said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of fear. I wanted to create something that resembles what that feels like.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

The exhibition is organized by Blanka Amezkua, Marco Saavedra and Maria Ponce Sevilla, artists and advocates who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border as undocumented minors decades ago (and have since been granted citizenship or asylum). The title of the exhibition, \u201c\u00a1Te Amo Porque S.O.S. Pueblo!,\u201d means \u201cI love you because you are my people\u201d and riffs on a poem by the Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti (1920-2009) \u2014 the Spanish tweaked to indicate a state of emergency in immigrant communities.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cThis is a celebration of all those who transform this world through their honest labor,\u201d said Amezkua, the originator of the show and, according to many in the exhibition, a godmother figure to immigrant artists in the South Bronx. \u201cWe should be celebrating despite everything that\u2019s going on,\u201d she added. \u201cFor this moment, we just want to say: We love you.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Amezkua, an artist who explores the\u00a0<\/span>Mexican art of papel picado<\/a>(\u201cpunched paper\u201d in Spanish), is known as a community leader, pulling artists into her orbit and then mentoring them. Several artists in the exhibition have shown work at Amezkua\u2019s artist-run space, Alexander Avenue Apartment 3A, which she managed for eight years out of her third-floor walk-up in Mott Haven, the Bronx.<\/p><\/div>

Amezkua first crossed the border pretending to be asleep in the back of an uncle\u2019s car\u00a0<\/b><\/span>at the age of about 4, following her parents, who were cotton farmers, to South Central Los Angeles. After returning to Mexico at 10, which separated her from her parents for five years, and making another clandestine crossing to reunite with them as a teenager, Amezkua found a way to a painting degree at California State University, Fresno, and ultimately a life in art.<\/p><\/div>

Many of the artists and organizers of the BronxArtSpace show have similar stories\u2014 of traumatic family separations, parents working tough jobs and living in crowded apartments shared with other families, growing up undocumented and fearing a knock on the door. But this exhibition is not a \u201ctrauma bomb,\u201d a trope that one of the show\u2019s artists, Leslie Lopez, said she was not interested in incorporating into her art.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Many of the artists and organizers of the BronxArtSpace show have similar stories\u2014 of traumatic family separations, parents working tough jobs and living in crowded apartments shared with other families, growing up undocumented and fearing a knock on the door. But this exhibition is not a \u201ctrauma bomb,\u201d a trope that one of the show\u2019s artists, Leslie Lopez, said she was not interested in incorporating into her art.<\/p><\/div>

Instead, the show offers a respite from fear, said Sevilla, one of the show\u2019s organizers, and is \u201ca way of saying that no matter what, no matter who\u2019s in power, and despite the fear and hate-mongering, people are going to produce beauty and people are going to want to show that.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

The artworks at BronxArtSpace include Erika Harrsch\u2019s \u201cUnited States of North America\u201d passport project, imagining open borders from Mexico through Canada and symbolized by a monarch butterfly (a free migrant between these territories), as well as the textile works of Colectivo Voces, a group of New York-based Indigenous women from the Mexican state of Guerrero who meet to embroider, crochet and speak in their Mixtec dialect.<\/p><\/div>

Assembled together, the artworks in \u201c\u00a1Te Amo \u2026\u201d provide a snapshot of a community whose artistic practices offer something of a lifeline.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cWe were joking that as undocumented people we\u2019re so stereotyped by the work of our hands, this exploitative labor,\u201d said Saavedra, another of the show\u2019s organizers.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cMaybe in response to that,\u201d he continued, \u201cwe need to create because we\u2019re not just waiters and construction workers and busboys and nannies and caretakers \u2014 which we are, and disproportionately so \u2014 but we\u2019re also tattoo artists and muralists and embroiderers and photographers.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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While the show is not a noisy, political one, some of the artworks make subtle references to violence on either side of the border. Rigo Flores, 36, has contributed two intricate embroideries that channel his mother\u2019s tradition of embroidering tortilla warmers. One of them is a delicately stitched portrait of Antonio Tizapa, the father of one of the 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero (Flores\u2019s home state in Mexico) in 2014; they were found to have been kidnapped and massacred by the local police and military in collusion with drug traffickers.<\/p><\/div>

Inspired by Tizapa\u2019s fight for justice, Flores has portrayed his subject with verdant green plants and adorned his skin with sequins. He wanted to transport Tizapa to a peaceful environment, he said, as well as to humanize immigrants.<\/p><\/div>

Patricia Espinosa, 54, has created a set of wings with tissue paper, barbed wire, and the zip ties that are often used to handcuff people in mass arrests. At the center of the work, she has offered some words that she hopes will lift people\u2019s spirits: \u201cNunca olvides que tienes alas,\u201d or \u201cNever forget you have wings.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Espinosa said that more and more, she has been contemplating a permanent return to Mexico, even as she feels an urgency to help those in her community who are the most vulnerable. After entering the United States on a student visa to pursue a degree at Parsons School of Design, which led to jobs at MoMA and the United Nations, Espinosa spoke rapturously of the opportunities she had been given in this country, and the gratitude she felt. Now, her outlook is different.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cAs much as I drink my lemon balm tea and stay calm, and say I\u2019m not going to read as much, I cannot take the daily influx of anxiety-inducing news anymore,\u201d she said. \u201cI just want to help get our motivation, our spirits up. That\u2019s the only thing I can do.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Planned before the 2024 election, the exhibition has grown in scale and funding as events have unfolded since President Trump\u2019s re-election, picking up support from the Ford Foundation and the Bronx Council on the Arts, among many others.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cWe are all affected by this crisis,\u201d said Libertad Guerra, executive director of the Clemente Soto V\u00e9lez Cultural Center on the Lower East Side, which also provided funding for the exhibition as part of a multiyear effort to document the contributions of Latino people to New York.<\/p><\/div>

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

While the exhibition comes at an excruciating moment for the immigrant artist community of the South Bronx, the opening, on April 25, was anything but somber. Preparations had been made for the worst-case scenario, and legal support was on hand should the authorities show up. Still, custom prints were raffled off, and revelers danced.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cThis show is dedicated to all the people that crossed that border,\u201d Amezkua said to the exuberant crowd. \u201cWe carry that border with us, and many of us came here as minors without our consent. We came together to create a safe space for us to celebrate all the things that we offer to this world.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

She paused and added, \u201cAnd this is just the beginning, because we\u2019re not going anywhere.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

\u00a1Te Amo Porque S.O.S. Pueblo!<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Through May 25 at the BronxArtSpace, 700 Manida Street, Bronx;\u00a0<\/span>bronxartspace.com<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a transcript of the article published in The New York Times on May 16, 2025, written by Tess Thackara. The article highlights…<\/p>\n

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