autoretrato o piel vieja y lo que sobra de una manda cumplida
(self-portrait or old skin and remnants of a prayer answered)
1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago IL
July 13, 2019 - August 3, 2019
In 2000, at the age of six my family and I migrated to the U.S. from Mexico. Seventeen years later I had an opportunity to return. During my visit I was confronted by ideas of family, belonging, memory, and rejection. My grandmother’s distance could be felt. I wondered if it was due to time and physical separation or a rejection of the person I grew up to be.
My earliest memories, playing under the lime and banana trees in my grandmother's garden. During my return, when the distance between me and my grandmother felt especially heavy I would ask her about her plants. She would tell me about her papaya tree, her pomegranate tree which was as old as me (a gift from my mother), her roses, her lime trees.
I would wander through the garden when I felt trapped in her home and in that town that was no longer mine. As I walked around I came across a snakeskin and the red stick left from a firework. Sometimes we outgrow the places we once called home, our skin sheds. Prayers are answered and all that’s left are the remnants of the fireworks.
– Juan Molina Hernández
autoretrato o piel vieja y lo que sobra de una manda cumplida Exhibition Guide (PDF)
autoretrato o piel vieja y lo que sobra de una manda cumplida | Chicago Artist Writers - August 3, 2019
Of working with grafting and waiting for rejection | Sixty Inches From Center - August 2, 2019