—Did you forget anything?
—If only!
“The migrant”, Luis Felipe Lomelí, 2005
'The Ship That Sets Sail is Not the Same as the One That Arrives' is a group show at Proyectos Ultravioleta that attempts to reflect on, or at least bring to the table, issues related to migration, labor, remittances, exportations, deportations and other types of tensions that mark our daily lives and articulate the highly asymmetrical relations between Guatemala and our friend to the north.
As they say up there, but not so far up, “Poor Mexico, so far away from God, and so close to the United States.” Whereas we down here, far from God and also from ourselves, but with promises—or at least a desire—for a better way of life.
With 'Caravan', Hellen Ascoli presents a textile-based sculpture that reminds us of those impossible journeys that so many of our own undertake in the search—and need—for a better tomorrow, carrying only what their body can carry. First they go into debt, then they leave behind everything they have and everything familiar, literally risking their lives… all for a chance at a dignified life— with employment, security, prosperity, and basic rights, of course, but always alert and ready to pick up what they’re carrying and move on.
Once there, those that make it work like no other accepting all sorts of jobs which the other ones, the ones from there, refuse. And so, as in Akira Ikezoe’s monumental painting 'Coconut Heads in the Wild Cycle', they insert themselves in that cycle of maximum productivity, doing everything, to sustain that vast and ever-encompassing system, which produces and endless supply of things—including those we didn’t know we needed!— ant that will allow them an income which not only affords the basics, but still yields enough to send back in the form of remittances.
What comes back sustains life and allows, for the very first time, to think not only about today but also about tomorrow. After covering the basics, comes the construction of a better future, a home. It comes in parts, as those payments arrive from the North, growing vertically in sections like in a dance, or like in Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa’s performance 'Incremental Architecture', each with a unique aesthetic which is half a blend of the styles that the owner identifies with, and half the economic possibilities at the moment in which it is built.. And running through these constructions there is always an iron 'Rib' like the one in Edgar Calel’s sculpture of the same name, offering an assurance of stability—perhaps more psychological than structural—and urging us to believe that these houses that hold life, and therefore tomorrow, will not fall down.
Being an immigrant, or indeed an emigrant, forces one to live with little and always be on the look out, given that everything can change in an instant. In 'Deported (Everything that I lost)' Regina José Galindo surrounds herself with a bed, kitchen, dishes, photos, furniture, chairs, mirror, television and plants, and dresses in the clothes of Cristina—a migrant recently deported from New York to Mexico—invoking her absence and highlighting the violence with which, from one moment to the next, that American dream turns into a nightmare, leaving behind an identity and a new life.
And before each of these instances, each of these immeasurable risks, each of these injustices, the eyes that witness everything that has transpired. With his oil painting 'Omega Nº 2', which observes us as we enter the exhibition, and which observes us again when we leave—to confirm whether we are that same ship or vessel that set sail as the one that finally arrived — the ink on paper works 'Circe Nº 5 'and 'Cyclops' by Rodolfo Abularach (1933-2020) put us in check, and remind us that in the face of so much injustice, we simply cannot close our eyes or look the other way.