BORDERS CRUZADAS
JUNE 29 - AUGUST 10
The exhibition opening is on Saturday, June 29, 2024 from 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Borders Cruzadas is the culmination of a year-long engagement with new arrivals at Centro Romero and police stations across the city of Chicago. Beginning in the summer of 2023, Castillo and Sands organized participatory photography workshops The workshops center on two questions, Como te vieron? Como me veo? (How do they see you? How do I see myself?)
DJ Sets by: Loly Roots and Adrian Hungry from Columbia - Members of Barrio Collective in Brooklyn
Chicago, Illinois. 2024. Collage by Elianais Cruces from Venezuela.
Mixed technique: Instant photography, collage, stickers, markers, and papers.
Centro Romero - PUG
Chicago, Illinois. 2024. Collage by Julio Zuniga from Mexico.
Mixed technique: Instant photography, collage, stickers, markers, and papers.
Centro Romero - PUG
On June 29, Pueblo Unido Gallery will open Borders Cruzadas, an installation by photojournalists Oscar Castillo and Wil Sands. In 2023, migrant crossings at the U.S. southern border reached an all-time high. Hundreds of thousands of migrants, primarily from South and Central America, but increasingly from across the globe, journeyed north, driven by political upheaval, economic insecurity, climate breakdown, and violence in their home countries. This historic movement of people is a well-documented, global phenomenon that has been accompanied by an increase in anti-immigrant sentiment and the tightening of immigration policy. Castillo and Sands, began accompanying migrants from Venezuela to the U.S. in the fall of 2022. Borders Cruzadas critiques photographic, journalistic, and documentary traditions in installations that combine photographs, objects Castillo and Sands gather or are gifted by migrant collaborators, with materials produced in collaborative photo workshops.
This latest iteration of Borders Cruzadas is the culmination of year-long engagement in Chicago. Beginning in the summer of 2023, Castillo and Sands organized workshops with new arrivals at Centro Romero and police stations across the city of Chicago. The workshops center on two questions, Como te vieron? Como me veo? (How do they see you? How do I see myself?) and invite participants to use photography to explore and express their own journeys to the United States. The resulting artworks will be included in the gallery presentation and in a companion exhibition on view simultaneously at Columbia College Chicago’s Glass Curtain Gallery.
This collaboration and the exhibitions have been facilitated by a Columbia College Chicago Diane Dammeyer Fellowship in Photographic Arts and Social Issues in partnership with Art Work Projects.
Oscar B. Castillo is a documentary photographer, multimedia artist and educator born in Caracas, Venezuela. His work focuses on social subjects related to youth, identity, migration, the cycles of political rupture and violence and the initiatives for inclusion and community empowerment. His work has appeared in TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, NYT, Le Monde and The Wall Street Journal. He has exhibited internationally and received awards, grants, and fellowships from the Eugene Smith Grant, Magnum Foundation, Diane Dammeyer Foundation, Onassis Foundation, World Press Photo, Aperture / Paris Photo, Tim Hetherington Visionary Award among others. His photobook “Esos Que Saben” has been recognized by Mention of Honor at PhotoEspaña 2023, Shortlist Aperture / Paris Photo 2022, 20 Photobooks of the Year 2022 by TIME Magazine and is part of the photobook collection at the Museum of Modern Art.
Wil Sands is a journalist and documentary photographer based in Mexico City, Mexico. As a journalist Wil is guided by the belief that journalism’s role is to “hold truth(s) to power”. As a photographer Wil searches for stories that add nuance and complexity to public discourse. His work seeks to challenge reductionist narratives that maintain the status quo. Co-founder of the Fractures Collective, Wil's reporting has appeared in major publications like The Washington Post, Wired Magazine and Harper's among many others.