MOnuments: Atlanta’s Immigrants
September 2020
The Home Depot Backyard at Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Location: 80 Northside Dr NW, Atlanta, GA 30314
Artist Statement:
This mural is a celebration of the humanity, resilience and diversity of Atlanta's immigrant community. The five people whose portraits are depicted in Monuments: Atlanta’s immigrants reflect our community’s grit and determination to thrive despite the limitations of immigration status.
This mural creates a space of both intimacy and monumentality that complements The Home Depot Backyard at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium—a space that brings us together in community. Like a fingerprint, the lines within each portrait are unique to the individual, reflecting a sense of intimacy and the complexity of each person’s story. At the same time, I hope the lines remind the viewer of a contour map of mountains, conveying the monumentality of each person’s resilience, and the resilience of our Atlanta immigrant community as a whole. These lines are also meant to create a connectedness, a reminder that we have more that brings us together than divides us—that the people in this mural are our neighbors and make contributions to our city that transcend the essential economic roles immigrants have long played in our communities and around the nation.
My status as an undocumented immigrant means there is a constant threat of my forced removal from the home and community I have created for myself in Atlanta and in the United States. Consequently, I am constantly learning to redefine home for myself and my murals have become a part of that. I include visual symbolism that gives me a way to feel connected to a home I cannot visit without the threat of being banned from the United States.
The cactus plants in this landscape allude to my family's migration journey through the desert and my Mexican heritage. I chose to place the people in this mural within a sanctuary, protected by the thorns of the cactus plants and embraced by desert flowers that not just survive, but vibrantly thrive in extreme environments. The Monarch butterflies surrounding each portrait have long been used as a symbol of migration by immigration activists around the world. Monarch butterflies find sanctuary in Michoacán, México, my birthplace, and migrate to Canada across borders, each generation more resilient. This sanctuary landscape is grounded in the color of a solid turquoise, a mineral that the Aztecs valued as much as gold.
My murals serve as a platform to reclaim the immigrant narrative and unapologetically center the stories of power and hope of people who have been historically and systematically oppressed. These spaces of public art actively juxtapose the symbols of hate, slavery, colonization, and racism that are courageously being taken down around the country by the people. There is a focus on diversity and intersectionality among the five portraits of the mural, an aspect that must be embraced in our fight for social justice. As Atlanta and the world moves forward from this poignant time in history, I hope this space helps us reimagine an Atlanta that is fearless and willing to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
