We Carry The Distance Migrated By Our Mothersa mural collaboration with Jess x Snow
Ford Foundation HQ, New York, NY.
2019
For many migrants, seeds from their homelands are brought to the U. S. by their mothers and grandmothers. Each seed is a time capsule that can be planted in their new home. In these two collaborative murals, migrant artists: Jess X. Snow and Layqa Nuna Yawar collectively trace their ancestral roots of the Incan ruins and Andean active volcanoes of Ecuador, and the fog covered mountains and rice terraces of southeastern China. The silhouettes used are the artist's interpretation of their own childhood selves. The hands depicted are that of the artists' own mother. Along with symbolic flowers indigenous to each of our homelands, woven into the mural are ingredients used in diasporic cuisine that were carried by our mothers when they brought us to America. Seeds that bloom into bell flowers and peonies indigenous to Ecuador and China have also travelled with our people across borders along with the cranes, condors, and hummingbirds. When we map the oceans and mountains that our families crossed to get to America and create self portraits from collages of our own homelands, we give name and voice to the lands we lost. We reclaim our heritage, and heal ourselves, each other, and our own families from the inter-generational traumascaused by migration.