MASKS OF EYES

"Art can impact the social context of family dislocations and can serve as a powerful tool in encouraging an open national dialogue about Zero Tolerance in our country"

So (sew) America Cares is a participatory social art project with a commitment to raise awareness about the lives of the children separated from their parents at the border. All the faces stitched together strengthen the very fabric of our own society.
In 2018 a Zero Tolerance immigration policy was announced, requiring that all families who cross the border shall not only be separated but also charged in federal court with the misdemeanor crime of illegal entry.

This Project’s mission is to advocate for these children and to extend an invitation to anyone who would like to participate. Thread by thread, fiber by fiber, a participating community will increase its understanding of the circumstances of these children who never asked to be illegal aliens. The project consists of 10 different faces that will be repeated 100 times each to add 1000 faces. The faces had been laser etched on raw canvas to allow the participant to use any kind of thread, yarn, wool, fabric, paint etc. So (sew) America Cares has a plan: to "sew" them back, to never allow these children to be lost again, to create a quilt of 1000 faces representing a portion of these children.
We cannot allow these traumatized children to disappear and in time, be forgotten.People are encouraged to stitch, sew, knit, knot, crochet, embroider, or braid these drawings so as to symbolically recover these children’s faces and lives again.

So (sew) America Cares is an international call for people to participate and raise awareness as to the consequences of this immigration policy and its devastating effect on children. As citizen, artist, mother and a child that suffered being separated from my family for eight years, I am concerned about the hundreds of separated children across our country.

Symbols are the basis of culture. Many cultures believe that the evil eye is a magic curse, also in our contemporary culture of visual consumption of over stimulus through the eye, the eyes become the tool of democratization of what we select to see.
Eyes can represent clairvoyance, omniscience, a gateway into the soul, intelligence, light, vigilance, moral conscience, truth or big brother is watching you. These masks of eyes in this series remain vigilant - waiting to begin the journey to see again. Just like the Eye of Horus was a symbol of power, health and protection this heads with multiple eyes become a synonym of healing, restoration and protection. This soft sculptures become charms, talismans and decorations designed to ward off the malevolence just like in many cultures.

Site Specific Installation

Aurora Molina taps into the colored clusters of clothes left behind in the rush to escape from the violence of war: orange and green satins, sequins, silky lace, a ruffled yellow skirt from an earlier and more innocent time in Syria, a time of paisley swirls and pink scarves, now dipped in blood, stained red from a violent civil war. Over 5 million Syrian refugees are on the run and another 11 million remain trapped and displaced within their country's borders. The Mediterranean beckons with its dangerous sea crossings, indifferent to the rags and small bodies tossed on to its shores. For those who make it out, they find camps in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon where donated clothes, shoes and food are distributed.
The masks of eyes remain vigilant - waiting to begin the journey again, to Europe and one day to our country.