Art exhibit 'Pulse and Hammer' at UC Riverside explores illegal immigration, free trade

Multimedia museum exhibit "Pulse and Hammer" at Riverside’s Sweeney Gallery uses vinyl sculptures, performance art and audio experiments to address issues that transcend borders.

“Florezca," or flourish, a concept that’s part artistic conceit and part bricks-and-mortar business, drives Margarita Cabrera's art. "The roots of this project are in conceptual art," says Cabrera. "It exists in this sort of middle space between what’s real and what’s not. This is an art work, but it’s also an actual multi-national corporation that functions as corporations do.”

The El Paso-based artist created the Florezca corporation concept last year. The aim is to expose traditional copper, clay and textile art from Mexico to a larger market while earning the makers of that art a fair wage.

“It’s a corporation that promotes workshop productions with immigrant communities in the U.S. to create, produce and sell art that speaks of issues important to them.”

Cabrera’s work attacks thorny issues like immigration and free trade with some lofty conceptual art. But she also directs her sharp perceptions toward people.

Cabrera’s soft, handcrafted vinyl sculptures offer a harrowing snapshot of what some immigrants endure as they cross into the United States illegally from Mexico. “For instance, the blue backpack, within it, all the elements within it belong to a young boy. The green one was the older grandfather figure, there’s a pink one for a little girl ... and all the elements inside are objects that represent their physical and psychological struggle.”

The backpacks are flung open, their contents spill out – objects that suggest a carefully planned but perilous journey. Everything is fabricated from vinyl, thread and other found material.

"A rosary, there’s a CD player, there’s cigarettes, garlic gloves used to rub against your tennis shoes to scare off the rattlesnakes. There’s lots of religious imagery, some pornography, water jugs, wire cutters. I also made a bicycle ... and this is a moment where the backpack and the objects are all that’s left behind to tell the story.”

“My great grandfather started migrating as a contracted worker from Central Mexico from the state of Guanajuato in the 1940s," says UC Riverside student and aspiring poet Yuri Lara. Lara participated in a performance that’s part of the Cabrera exhibit.

She recognizes her own family’s immigration story in the artist’s work. “As a Chicana I embody a lot of those border issues because once they extend beyond the physical, right, I just live in that social space of borderlands; socially, language. We see the intensity of immigration issues rising, without really looking at the nature of the problem. I think it’s very important to rearticulate that language and definitely art is a way to get at those things that are not said in mainstream media.”

“The performance called 'Pulse and Hammer' involved a 30-foot platform with two heavy pieces of copper," says Sweeney Gallery curator Tyler Stallings, describing another Cabrera performance piece that plays on a video loop in the exhibit. "There were about 20 community members that had these sledgehammer and were beating the copper in an orchestrated manner.

“And many of these community members had undocumented status. We actually had a lot of discussions about how would they respond to being in very public situations being knowingly undocumented. They basically said, 'Where do we sign up?!'”

Undocumented immigrants also appear in a sound installation created with a UC Riverside grad student. In a series of listening booths, UCR students who came to the U.S. illegally in the arms of migrant parents tell their stories.

Cabrera is cautious when she discusses the role of undocumented immigrants in the Sweeney exhibit. We don’t check immigration status, she says.

She’s also careful to distinguish between volunteer collaborators who may be undocumented – and people she's contracted to work for her Florezca cooperative. “The subject matter of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is very much something I push in the production. But the actual employer-employee relationship between Florezca and undocumented immigrants, that does not exist.”

“Pulso y Martillo,” Spanish for "Pulse and Hammer," continues through April at the Sweeney Art Gallery in Riverside.