Juror's Statement

(L to R): Gilda Davidian, Alice Kutzner, Yvonne Beatty

According to the last census in 2000, more than ten percent of U.S. residents are foreign born*. For the majority of us who live in California, immigration is a fact of life. We hear stories about immigrants on the radio, we watch them on TV, and we read them in the local newspapers. We encounter immigrants in public places, at work, at a friend’s house, in our neighborhood, and within our own family. I myself am an immigrant—a naturalized citizen—who arrived in California in the early seventies. Whether we are recent transplants or have been in the United States for generations, the motivation for having undertaken the journey from one country to another is the hope of finding new opportunities and making the United States our home.

In selecting the works for the exhibition “Women Artists on Immigration,” I found myriad expressions of the immigrant experience: many works speak of loss and despair, longing and nostalgia; others depict isolation and alienation; a few represent hope and joy. Gilda Davidian’s photographs of herself imitating her parents in dress and activity speak of her desire to get to know them—to be in their shoes, literally and metaphorically. Alicia Kutzner’s Dirndl 2 (2008) presents a traditional German dress as a repository of memories. Are those her memories or do they belong to her mother or grandmother? Can memories be retrieved or put away at will, as in a closet whose doors we are able to open and shut at will?

Linda Vallejo

The struggle for legalization is vividly expressed in Linda Vallejo’s Immigration USA (2008): immigrants march, united by a common cause, accompanied by words such as “Hope and Desperation” and “One March, Many Journeys.” This work captures the aspirations of millions who want to live in this country without fear of the authorities. Yvonne Beatty’s painful portrait of a young African slave in Passport (2008) refers not only to the history of slavery in the United States but also to forced immigration as people flee political repression, violence, hunger, poverty, or lack of opportunities. The man’s reddened eyes express both the pain of past indignities and the power of survival. The passport—a document that symbolizes freedom of movement—here represents a form of imprisonment.

The necessity for sweeping immigration reform is illustrated in Lynn E. Letterman’s A Two-sided Border Story. Here illegal and legal immigration are shown as branches growing on separate sides of the same tree. The family in Poli Marichal’s Vigilia (2008) could well represent the risks of illegal immigration, or the left side of the tree, while Carol Nye’s portrait of a successful middle-class woman in From the series “Chinese American Women of Los Angeles”: Lilly L. Chen (1996) personifies the positive aspects of immigration.

The history of immigration in the United States has been a rocky road, to say the least, yet it is this history that continues to lure people from all over the world to a country in which miracles are still possible. Where else could Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan citizen and an American woman, be elected the 44th president of the United States? The immigrant’s dream of a better future is alive and well!

Alma Ruiz

* Nancy Foner, In a New Land: A Comparative View of Immigration (New York and London: New York University Press, 2005), p. 1.

(L to R): Lynn Elliott Letterman, Poli Marichal, Carol Nye