DEPORTED: A FAMILY DIVIDED
JULY 29 - SEPTEMBER 23
Pueblo Unido Gallery in partnership with ART WORKS Projects are honored to present- Deported: An American Division / A Family Divided by photographer Rachel Woolf.
Deported: An American Division / A Family Divided presents work from an ongoing project by Colorado-based photographer Rachel Woolf on her time with Lourdes Salazar Bautista and her family as they navigate the U.S. federal immigration system and the joys and sorrows of life between the United States and Mexico.
After residing in Michigan with her U.S. born children Bryan, Lourdes ‘Lulys’, and Pamela for 20 years, Lourdes Salazar Bautista was deported in 2017 and joined her husband Luis in Mexico, while her children found their lives and education split between the two countries. Woolf’s photographs and documentation in both the U.S. and Mexico capture the personal realities of a family separated by borders as well as first hand accounts of a complex and protracted immigration system.
“The only thing that matters is the love we have for each other, being happy because [we] are together. When we finally get together, we are going to be an amazing family,” Lourdes says.
This exhibition marks the first collaboration between Pueblo Unido Gallery and ART WORKS Projects. Rachel Woolf was a 2018 ART WORKS Projects Emerging Lens Fellow and has since exhibited her work with AWP on several occasions, including recently in AWP’s gallery space in Chicago, Stony Brook University in New York, and as part of Arts Alliance Illinois’ One State Conference in Springfield, Illinois.
Rachel Woolf is a Denver, Colorado-based independent visual journalist. She specializes in documentary photography, videography and portraiture. Her work aims to intimately show aspects of humanity intersecting with economic and social issues. She has been published in The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, ESPN, Bloomberg, and TIME Magazine. She graduated from Ithaca College with a B.A. degree in Documentary Studies, attended the Eddie Adams Workshop XXVII in 2014 and the Missouri Photo Workshop in 2015. Woolf was an AWP Emerging Lens Fellow in 2018 and maintains a strong collaborative presence with AWP. As a Fellow, Woolf developed her ongoing project Deported: An American Division / A Family Divided, highlighting her time with Lourdes Salazar Bautista and her family between Michigan and Mexico as they navigated life within the U.S. immigration system. Since 2017, the project has taken on many forms including exhibitions, symposiums, and publications and has been presented at venues in Chicago, New York, and Springfield, Illinois. Rachel Woolf's website: https://www.rachelwoolfphotography.com
ART WORKS Projects’ mission is to use design and the arts to raise awareness of and educate the public about significant human rights issues. ART WORKS provides visual advocacy tools which produce action on human rights crises at the grassroots, media, and policy levels.
Conceptualized and created in conjunction with established humanitarian and human rights advocacy organizations, ART WORKS’ art and design exhibitions, books, recordings, films, and other initiatives provide opportunities for large numbers of the general population to engage in ending major human rights violations.
ART WORKS’ agenda includes projects exposing genocide, extreme sexual violence, women’s rights, famine, child labor and human trafficking, ethnic cleansing and tyranny. ART WORKS selects topics which are the most intractable, the least covered in the mainstream media, and the most abusive for victims.