Curator

Reggie Williamson

Contributing Artists

Meli Nava

Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:

Immigrant labor makes up 19.1% of the United State’s workforce, that roughly being made up of about eight million undocumented individuals contributing to the United States economy (New York Times). El Mantel y El Granero’s mission is to hold conversations about labor issues through a Mexican immigrant lens. This is a population that is often seen and easily commodified, yet their visibility is being erased within a lived reality, this either being done through media or federal legislation. This exhibition would function as a visual anthology of immigrant labor in the United States through different forms of print media. El Mantel y El Granero will centralize printed portraits of immigrant laborers of the American Southwest. Practices such as lithography, etching, and relief printing will be present in the show, them being as vital the content of the works. These traditional printmaking mediums then put the work within a fine arts vernacular, actualizing their existence as fine art objects. They are also labor intensive mediums, that varying from grinding a limestone, carving into plywood, or scratching into copper plates, reflecting a form of the labor being depicted. Through motifs of laborial gesture and objects, the show will exhibit the intimate
spaces that immigrant laborers construct for themselves.

Portraiture of immigrant bodies provides a representation of this population that is vital to this country’s economy. For, portraiture was always reserved for the social elite, framing not only their subjects but the inherent power structures behind them as well. Through the depiction of immigrant laborers, the show will push towards a subject that subverts the colonial standard of this archaic tradition and exudes an aspirational representation. By highlighting the beauty and drama within the intimate moments of immigrant labor, the gallery can transform into a site where this community can be seen under the same canonical light as refined contemporary art. This show will recontextualize the gaze that immigrant laborers often confront. Questions are then posed, who is confronting who? And where is this confrontation occurring? How does location affect this? The framework of the gallery allows for a different type of gaze, one connotated with admiration and authority, not one of othering.

So it is within this context of the institution, El Mantel y El Granero would ask for the viewer to reflect on their relationship to these images. This show would challenge viewers to step outside of what is expected of these spaces and who is being represented and seen. These images will be taking up space, not meant to be apart of the background. What I would like to strive for this show to accomplish is to not only hold conversations on labor in these spaces but also pointing them elsewhere. How can fine art (the gallery, the artist, etc) make the viewer become more aware of those who contribute to the basic functioning of the world they exist in? So not only through the content of the exhibition, but through the community-driven programming, the show would invite the community to push themselves to be apart of these critical discussions, at the institution and at home. The act of inviting local Chicago communities into this as well allows for an exchange of rhetoric, experiences, and interactions that can form a multitude of relationships and outlets to not make SAIC and endpoint to this complex issue.