Library Exhibition: Painting the Border: A Child’s Voice

The University Library is pleased to announce a new exhibition in the first floor exhibit cases: Painting the Border: A Child’s Voice

In an exhibit of 32 paintings produced in August, 2019, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, migrant children paint their perceptions of the US/Mexico border.  The children created images of their journeys, fears, hopes, and disillusions.  Their paintings reveal a tenderness not expressed in prevalent border rhetoric, to show the human consequences of US/Mexico border policy. Mostly, the paintings relay the realities of 32 youngsters among more than 281 million migrants worldwide, a staggering number growing as push factors such as war, political unrest, persecution, and climate change, motivate displacement of individuals and families globally.  The young artists stranded in Ciudad Juárez are between the ages of 4 – 21 and are primarily  from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba, and El Salvador.  They are among more than 19,000 asylum seekers waiting in Ciudad Juárez under the MPP (also known as “Return to Mexico”). 

The exhibit Painting the Border: A Child’s Voice, was a collaborative effort to offer migrant children in Ciudad Juárez a day of respite; a break from the monotony and insecurity of shelter-living and homelessness.  “We wanted to remind children that they are children, to give them a memory from their experience in Juárez that is loving and positive, so that they know that someone cares about them,” said Lucero de Alba, life-long Juárez resident, children’s author,  and volunteer.

The 2019 project was initiated by Diana Barnes, a Skidmore Senior Teaching Professor in the Department of World Languages & Literatures, and organized in Juarez by Alba, a World Organization for Peace representative.

It will be on display in the University Library through April 27.