De Aquí y De Allá

Hello, my name is Adena Adams and today we will be looking at Yehimi Cambron’s piece for the Dalton Gallery’s ‘Searching for Home’ exhibition titled, ‘De Aquí y De Allá’. Cambron’s piece in the Searching for home exhibition is an installation that spans from one wall of the gallery to another. Two wooden panels on opposing walls are connected by a trail of paper butterflies. The butterflies, covered in printed text, are individually hung from the ceiling by strings. The wooden panel on the left wall displays a collage of faded photos. A little girl in a dress is centered and her photo enlarged above the rest of what appears to be a family. Photos of a man appear twice to the right of her, while photos of a woman with two children appear 3 times to the left. Paper butterflies hover in the upper right corner of the panel. The wooden panel on the right gallery wall is an acrylic self-portrait. The figure stands with her back to the “viewer”, arm outstretched with a paintbrush in her left hand. Her head is slightly turned and she is looking to her left, almost as if she is turning around. Paper butterflies are hung in the upper left corner of the panel. Yehimi Cambrón is an artist, activist and educator who was born in Michoacán, México and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. When she was 8 years old her family made a miles-long trek across a desert, in order to cross the border from Mexico to America. Cambron is both a Dreamer as well as a DACA recipient. Both the 2012 Dream Act and DACA were intended to help undocumented immigrant youth in America stay, work amd live in America. Cambron received DACA during her college at Agnes Scott College, from which she graduated in 2012. For a while she worked as both an elementary teacher and high school teacher at her alma mater, in order to give back to her community. However, with the Trump administration’s recension of DACA, Cambron, like many other Dreamers, had to leave their jobs.As for her current work, Cambron is now a full-time artist who has turned to painting murals around the Atlanta area as a means of activism as well as expression. Her murals usually depict the diversity and resilience of people who are seldom represented and whose voices go unheard based on their immigration status. Monarch butterflies are also a common symbol in her work as they migrate freely in order to survive, with no acknowledgement to political borders. One of her goals is to reclaim immigrant stories by challenging the “good-immigrant vs bad immigrant” narrative.This includes redefining what it means to be a “dreamer” by extending the definition to immigrant parents, the original dreamers. De Aqui de y Alla, which translates to “From here and there”, exemplifies the concept of Searching for Home in more ways than one. Cambron channels the concept of time and memories through the transferred photo panel. Cambron blew up photocopies of her childhood photographs and transferred them onto a wooden panel, the faded edges representing deteriorated memories. The black and white is used to give an air of nostalgia, as opposed to the acrylic panel painted in full color. With time memories fade, and when one is physically removed from a space, the memories tied to that space feel even more distant. But with these photographs Cambron stays connected to a place she calls home. She also conveys the sense of separation many immigrants feel, even before they make the decision to leave to a new country. Her father, like many, worked in America to send money back home. This ultimately separated the family for periods at a time. Cambron represents this visually on her transferred photo panel, with photos of mother and siblings to the right of her enlarged figure and photos of her father, which were photos of him in America, to the left.Identity is one of the biggest themes in this installation and it is integral to Cambron’s own search for home. Identity is often tied to home, however, a sort of limbo is created by leaving one home another. You’re split between identities, and under an oppressive system, you might have to fight to be recognized. Cambron’s search for home and thus identity has not been easy but it is entirely her own, and she refuses to be defined by anyone else. The installation begins with the panel on the left gallery wall where the largest photo is of Cambron dressed in a butterfly costume, then it follows the symbolic trail of butterflies “over a wall” to the right panel where her self-portrait literally turns, looking back at the person she used to be and the place she still calls home. Her piece in this exhibition reflects her journey and the way she has chosen to give it meaning physically and visually, a representation for the past, the present and future.