黑料不打烊

Since 2014, Claudio P茅rez, Spanish teacher in the Modern Language Department at Sandia Preparatory School, has taken his advanced Spanish-language students to El Paso, Texas where they utilize their Spanish skills to interact first-hand with immigrants and advocates at the Cristo Rey Border Immersion Program. Upon their return to Albuquerque, students illustrate a series of doors containing colorful and powerful imagery that tells the stories of the people they met and reflect on major themes of immigration at the border. The doors encourage visitors to consider the lived experiences of immigrants at the center of a complex historical relationship between the United States and Mexico. 

Doors are points of entry, access, passage, movement, exit, and escape. Metaphorically, doors signify opportunity, uncertainty, hope, change, and transition. Puertas fronterizas / Border Doors is an exhibition of student work done between 2019 and 2024 that contemplates the symbolic door鈥搖nlike a physical border wall or fence鈥揳s it relates to the immigrant experience. Doors open and close; the border doors shown here demonstrate the passageway of people and their dreams for a better life.

The mixed-media doors featured in the exhibition are interpretative collages and paintings of five central issues relating to immigration: Artificial Intelligence and Immigration; COVID-19 and Essential Workers; Kids in Cages; Family Separation; and Superheroes and Immigration, which highlights the victims of the 2019 El Paso Walmart mass shooting.