“There is a fearlessness in this exhibition that I find so compelling. Just as these artists do not shy away from the daunting political issues of immigration and climate change, they are not afraid to be bold, colorful, and vibrant; and to work with the quotidian, the simple objects, and materials around them. They are not afraid to follow their joy.”

- Hannah Barco, Curator

Cog•nate Collective’s practice is centered around developing research projects, public interventions, and experimental pedagogical programs in collaboration with communities across the US/Mexico border region in a communal effort to resist systems of oppression. The exhibition takes its title from their featured installation of a custom series of 7-day prayer candles and an accompanying audio broadcast – both of which quote Mexican singer Chavela Vargas’ ballad of the same name.

Hoesy Corona is similarly focused on validating and centering immigrant experiences through installation, mixed media work, and performances that develop fabulated narratives around bodies moving across the land. In this exhibition, Corona presents new iterations from three ongoing series of work, Climate Ponchos, Mother Death Life Mama, and Terrestrial Caravan, in which he summons the looming climate crisis to emphasize that anyone on this Earth could experience the uprooting and disruption of emigration.

"My artwork is best understood against the backdrop of settler colonialism, US imperialism, the politics of power, the politics of place, and the process of forced racialization in the United States."

- Hoesy Corona

When exploring the exhibition, viewers encounter works that speak to the idea of being in motion while holding space such as Corona’s Climate-Migrants that are at once mythic, contemporary, and draw the visitor to and around them. Created through performances for the camera and digital collage, the panels depict caravans of people, made anonymous by bodysuits and large swaths of flower-filled hair, carrying ruck-sacs, suitcases, and bags through vacant and ominous landscapes.

“We argue instead for a (bottom up) model that considers citizenship as process: negotiating how we bind ourselves with and to one another as citizens who co-inhabit a territory, while inhabiting bodies uniquely marked by difference. Drawing boundaries of belonging hat are fluid, exceeding and questioning the logic of borders, prefiguring a transborder polis."

- Cog•nate Collective

Notions of memorialization, restoration, and the dissolution of binaries are present through works like Hacia la Vida candle installation by Cognate Collective where visitors are invited to light a candle and recite an incantation in solidarity with migrants and struggles that seek our collective liberation. Cognate Collective’s sound installation permeates the space collaging revolutionary texts, popular songs, migrant testimonies, and familiar echoes of bustling marketplaces; and their video installation, En todas partes y en ninguna a la vez... (El Cielo del Sobreruedas) [Everywhere and nowhere at once (The sky of the Sobreruedas)], provides a poignant viewpoint of looking upward towards a shared sky full of hope and aspiration.

Corona and Cog•nate Collective invite audiences to look past the artificiality of borders; and instead, to find and celebrate common humanity. Cog•nate Collective’s use of quotidian objects as the vehicles for explicit language based on political advocacy parallel Corona’s claiming of space through bold and vibrant aesthetics, which draw upon his own childhood memories of Mexico. Together, the works in Hacia la Vida I Toward Life hold up a mirror to our preconceived notions of immigration and presents a space to empathize with acts of journeying, join the pursuit of hope, remember the interconnectedness of community, and find joy as a method of resistance.
 

Exhibition Catalogue with Essay by Almudena Caso

Cog•nate Collective

Cog•nate Collective develops research projects, public interventions, and experimental pedagogical programs in collaboration with communities across the US/Mexico border region.

Since being founded in 2010, their work has interrogated the evolution of the border as it is simultaneously erased by neoliberal economic policies and bolstered through increased militarization –tracing the fallout of this incongruence for migrant communities on either side of the border.

As a result, their inter-disciplinary projects often address issues of citizenship, migration, informal economies, and popular cultural, arguing for understanding the border not as a bifurcating line, but as a region that expands and contracts with the movement of people and objects.

They currently work between Tijuana, MX, Santa Ana, CA and Los Angeles, CA.

Hoesy Corona

Hoesy Corona (based in the U.S.) is a Queer Latinx artist creating uncategorized and multidisciplinary art spanning installation, performance, and sculpture. His latest installation Terrestrial Caravan (2022) at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD is on view through Aug 2023. He is a current Winston Tabb Special Collections Research Center Public Humanities Fellow 2022-2023 at the Johns Hopkins University's Sheridan Libraries'. Hoesy has exhibited widely in galleries, museums, and public spaces in the United States and internationally including recent solo exhibitions All Roads Lead to Roam (2023) at Eric Dean Gallery at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN; Sunset Moonlight (2021) at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD; and Alien Nation (2017), at The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presented by Transformer in Washington, DC. Hoesy is a former Taf Fellow 2019-2020 in Tulsa, OK and a Halcyon Arts Lab Fellow 2017-2018 in Washington, DC. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including The Nicholson Project artist residency, The Mellon Foundation’s MAP Fund Grant, and the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Grit Fund Grant. His work has been reviewed by The Washington Post, Bmore Art Magazine, and The American Scholar among others. In 2022 he was named the inaugural Restoring Hope, Restoring Trust Artist in Residence 2023 at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN. He is a current resident artist at The Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD.