Unearthed: Desenterrado

Unearthed: Desenterrado, featuring Adriana Corral, runs October 4, 2018-January 6, 2019. 

This work brings to surface an often-overlooked part of American history that we see resemblances to in both historic and current events. Unearthed: Desenterrado continues Corral’s investigations into injustice and human rights and the presentation of the work beyond its site-specific installation ensures these issues reach new communities and contexts. Blue Star Contemporary, presents this billboard iteration of Unearthed: Desenterrado as a participant of For Freedoms: 50 State Initiative. Since 2016, artist–founded For Freedoms has produced exhibitions, town hall meetings, billboards, and public art to spur greater civic life.

Adriana Corral’s Unearthed: Desenterrado illustrates the complex history between the United States and Mexico. The billboard image erected on Blue Star Contemporary’s roof depicts a white flag embroidered with an illustration of a “Mexican” golden eagle and an “American” bald eagle with claws engaged, each emblematic of their respective nation’s patriotism. The 60-foot x 40-foot flag was originally part of an outdoor, site-specific artwork, located on the historic grounds of the Rio Vista Farm in Socorro, Texas.

Rio Vista Farm was a point of entry for the Bracero Program, established by the federal government during World War II, and known as one of the largest foreign worker programs in U.S. history. Between 1951 and 1964, Rio Vista Farm processed more than 80,000 Mexican workers per year. Corral first learned about Rio Vista Farm while in Germany as a Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Residency Program participant at Künstlerhaus Bethanian. While in residence, the artist traveled throughout Europe visiting many memorial and monument sites, particularly in Berlin, to explore how we address human rights abuses. Corral traveled to concentration camps, researching not only the architecture of confinement but also the infliction of cyanide-based pesticides on prisoners. Similar methods were also used on Mexican immigrant laborers as a delousing procedure in the U.S. after World War II. Mexicans—like many immigrants and people of color in the US—were stereotyped as threats for disease, STDs, lice, and other illnesses. Corral’s immediate impression of the dilapidated buildings at Rio Vista Farm was how hauntingly similar they were to concentration camps from WWII Europe.

Unearthed: Desenterrado as a site-specific project was curated by Cortney Lane Stell and produced by Black Cube, a nomadic contemporary art museum, based in Denver, Colorado.

Adriana Corral is based in Texas. Her installations, performances, and sculptures embody universal themes of loss, human rights violations, concealment, and memory. Corral employs a rigorous researched-based practice where anthropologists, writers, journalists, gender scholars, human rights attorneys, and victims provide her with the foundation for her works.

Opening is October 4 from 7-10 p.m.