“Detention Nation” is a big, bold move for the and, no doubt, a controversial one.
For 25 years now, has been at the heart of a visual arts exploration of what it means to be Latino in Colorado and beyond. Though the discussion has focused mainly on personal identity, with artists demonstrating, in the most colorful of ways, how they balance t with the realities of being part of a minority group in a rapidly changing United States.
The current exhibit is different. It is political. Overtly. It takes a stand on one of the most controversial issues of our day, illegal immigration.
The artist collective has installed in the gallery a mock prison mimicking detention facilities where the U.S. government holds those suspected of entering the country illegally as courts decide their fate. Barbed-wire fences and surveillance cameras, tiny bunks and exposed toilets, constant noise; the space is stark, soulless and dehumanizing.
Worse than the cramped quarters in these facilities is a prevailing emotional anxiety that the exhibit captures well. Inmates wait helplessly for word on whether they can stay in the country or face deportation to homelands where violence and poverty can be rampant, where governments can be abusive, jobs scarce, the opportunity to rise in society nonexistent.
“Detention Nation” sticks to the physical facts, but only to a point. It goes to great lengths to make visitors feel like they’re spending time in a jail (albeit in one that’s been set up in a city that’s relatively friendly to immigrants, and in one of its best galleries; factors that minimize the tension its creators hope to convey).
But it’s also a work of art with distinctly Latino leanings. Strewn around this prison are bodies wrapped in Mylar that hint at how incarceration strips away dignity and individuality. And printed on bed sheets that cover the bunks and climb up the walls are ghostly, white silhouettes of human forms. These are tortured souls and their spiritual presence, amid the stark realities of the faux prison, recalls the Latin American tradition of magical realism, blending fact with supernatural fiction.
The spiritual elements give the exhibit a voice and also a point of view. Clearly these people with dubious legal status — and let’s be frank, some would call them criminals, others modern-day pioneers — are victims according to this exhibit.
The point is brought home by the photos and text scattered about the galleries walls. Real letters written by inmates during their incarceration are put on display, in their own handwriting, revealing physical struggles and psychological agony.
“In one room there are up to 38 people. There are two toilets. 1 to urinate and one to use number 2. They are five meters from where we eat,” writes Carlos in a letter from the in Conroe, Texas. Visitors see his letter and the envelope he mailed it in.
“Pray for me so that the officers and judges heart is touched and for me to get approved,” goes a letter on loose-leaf paper, sent from a facility in San Diego and signed “XXOO Selene.”
These detainees appear to be a varied lot, some new arrivals, some the alien minors known as “dreamers” in the immigration reform movement.
In this and other ways, the exhibit pulls no punches and each member of the Austin-based Sin Huellas manages to make a strong stand. There are eight in all: , , Deyadira Arellano, Brenda Cruz-Wolf, Hope Sanford, Carlos Carrasco, Selene C. and Douglas Menjivar — and some of them have spent time in these facilities.
Their name translates as “without a trace” and refers, the group says, to the practice of “erasing one’s fingerprints with acid, fire or other surgical procedures in order to evade detection by ICE, or other authorities after deportation.”
There’s no mystery there about the seriousness of their efforts or just how far the is going in giving them a platform. Executive director is the first to say the institution is sticking its neck out. She’s already heard from visitors who are uncomfortable with the exhibit.
But, she says, the move is intentional. At 25, the museo is looking at the ways it serves the city and how they might change. The idea to do something on immigration — pro-immigration — first came from its constituents and Salazar responded by searching for artists who were addressing the topic.
She’ll be looking to see how the city — museum regulars, newcomers, funders and people on both sides of the immigration issue — responds before making her next move.
Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@denverpost.com or @rayrinaldi
DETENTION NATION
The Museo de las Americas presents an installation by the Austin-based collective Sin Huellas. Through May 27. 861 Santa Fe Drive. $5. 303- 571-4401 or museo.org.
