BACKGROUND
Many Latin-Americans are escaping their homeland because of poverty, corruption, hunger, and violence. Their countries are unable to provide basic human rights; therefore, hard working people are fleeing their countries, not in search of the “American Dream,” but rather simply looking for a safe place to protect themselves from violence.
PROCESS
My main goal when creating this collage was to generate conversation. I wanted it to be somewhat controversial, yet persuasive in its aim to prompt change. This is why I chose to critique the current immigration system of the United States because although many Americans know of the problem, most of them fail to acknowledge the issue. The inspiration behind my collage primarily comes from what I heard growing up as a child, as growing up, many people told me that America was the resemblance of heaven and that my country was the resemblance of hell. Thus, heaven is portrayed as a blue sky and hell as a red prison tangled on thorns. However, finding the images to work with was difficult because I wanted the collage to look like a pop art picture. Therefore, I had to look at different websites to find the perfect image, with Pinterest, Instagram, and google images being my primary searching sites. Nonetheless, the most challenging part of creating my collage was finding images of children that accurately reflected the current situation at the border. Fortunately, I found the perfect portraits from old paintings and some digital photographs that were created recently. Once I had all the images that I wanted to include in the collage, I used Photoshop to crop and unite all of it in one picture.
MESSAGE
My collage intends to inform people that children should neither be incarcerated nor separated from their parents, as such separation can be incredibly detrimental on the children’s behalf. Therefore, with this collage, I wanted to reflect and highlight the pain that many children imprisoned at the border experience. I do this through the inclusion of several images that demonstrate the grief children experience across the world. This depiction provides the viewer with a realistic point of view of our current system, as they can witness the struggle, in a sense, that little immigrant boys and girls at the border experience on a day-to-day basis. In my opinion, no one should have to endure such suffering, especially at such a young age. This is also an issue that is incredibly personal to me, as I am an immigrant. Though fortunately, I have never had to experience what my fellow brothers and sisters faced when they immigrated to America, I can greatly empathize with their circumstances, as I too come from a country notorious for political corruption and disorder. I am fortunate to acclaim that I was able to take a plane to get here, rather than risk my life traveling via ocean on a dainty raft or entrusting coyotes to get me across the border safely. I am fortunate to acclaim that I have always had stable living conditions here in America and have never experienced struggle. And I am fortunate to acclaim that I have never been at risk. However, it is most unfortunate that not all children can make such acclamations, as daily children are risking their lives to cross the American border and are met with a prolonging of their suffering as they continue to experience poor living conditions, being at risk of assault, molestation or rape. This ultimately what my collage aims to depict–the struggle of my people, something of which I hope will change.
Enritron 