ARLEENE CORREA VALENCIA
POR FAVOR NO ME OLVIDES / PLEASE DON’T FORGET ME
Opening:
Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 from 6:00PM – 8:00PM
Exhibition:
15 November – 31 December, 2022
MCA Gallery is please to present Por Favor No Me Olvides / Please Don’t Forget Me, a solo show by Arleene Correa Valencia. Arleene was born in Mexico, and crossed the Mexican-American border without status when she was only 3 years old. As a result, she is a DREAMER and beneficiary of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a program set in place by President Obama in 2012. Her work draws on this experience in a deeply personal way, creating textiles that honor her indigenous heritage, her journey, and the sacrifices immigrants make for the life their kids might lead.
The gallery will be presenting her iconic large textiles, as well as 30 small framed works.
About the Exhibition: Human migration has been a tactic of survival for many people who traverse through unfamiliar lands, territories and nations in search of the American Dream. Transnational families are formed when those who live apart, separated by national borders, manage to retain a sense of collective welfare and unity.
Transnational families, much like these paintings, exist together and apart divided by lines that define imaginary boundaries created to serve the purpose of protection. In these textile works lines are carefully drawn to play with ideas surrounding visibility and invisibility as they relate to migrant families who have at one point or another been victims of family separation. When confronted with flashing lights, a poetic representation of society’s harsh scrutiny against undocumented migrants, the guardian figures in the works absorb all of the visibility in an effort to protect the child. The separation of these families occurs only in complete darkness when light is removed and the parental figure dissolves into the background. This moment of sacrifice allows the child to be a become a beacon of light.
This is Arleene Correa Valencia’s first solo exhibition in Canada.
MCA would like to thank all who came out to the opening reception and the Partners In Art viewing of Arleene Correa Valencia – Por Favor No Me Olvides / Please Don’t Forget Me.
Learn more about Arleene’s work in this short video of the evening:
BIO
Arleene Correa Valencia, is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. She earned her BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts. Her work has been featured in such publications and media as the Harvard Crimson, the Pacific Sun, El Herldo de Mexico, NBC29 NPR and Latino USA.
Inspired by her own transitional family Arleene Correa Valencia has sourced letters she wrote to her father in 1996, and uses the language in this archive to recreate the moments that depict the timeline her family’s migration. Valencia’s most iconic works are textiles that depict migrant parents and their children against black backgrounds. She creates the figures of the parents using reflective material and fabric repurposed from her own family’s clothing. She etches the children in glow-in-the-dark thread, implying them only by an empty background. With lights on, you only see the parent’s clothes, with flash photography, you only see the parent’s skin, and in the dark, you only see the outline of the child.
Recent solo exhibitions include Catherine Clark Gallery (San Francisco, 2022), The Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Puebla, 2022),Trout Museum of Art (Wisconsin, 2021), Cal Maritime Community Art Gallery (Vallejo, 2019). For group shows, she has an upcoming one in Berkeley art center for 2023. She has exhibited at the Untitled art fair (Miami, 2021), Centro de Artes Gallery (San Antonio, 2020), White Box Gallery 2020 (New York, 2019).