"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.
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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.
PERSISTENT CARAVAN
Artists Aurora Molina and Edison Peñafiel will create a collaborative two-person exhibition that is an immersive multi-disciplinary installation. The exhibition will take place at Fat Village in the growing Fort Lauderdale art district. Open for viewing to the public for three months from January to April 2020. The artists will run community engaging events like a panel discussion and interactive tours. The collaboration will focus on socio-political issues relevant to the artists' personal and collective experiences as migrants. Their work will encourage dialogue around internment and displacement, pressing matters in our current political climate and the upcoming Presidential election. The immersive installation will create a powerful empathetic inducing environment that will engage all the senses of the viewer.
This exhibition seeks to open dialogue about immigration, its causes and effects, and our familiarity to it. I hope that it will be a safe space for sharing of personal and collective experiences and reflection about this theme. The work is not just to be seen, but to be lived. With this installation I will create an experience for the viewer with the hope that it becomes a learning opportunity.
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