Regresa a Mí / Come Back to Me
2018
Custom votive candles + Performance
A custom series of prayer candles that borrow the form and iconography of silkscreened veladoras, and likewise include a prayer/message narrating a clear demand, as well as instructions for how they can be used by those who light them to incite change in their lives and those of their communities.
Our silkscreened candles all had the same image on their fronts: an image of hands divided by a bar, framed by the phrase “Regresa a mi / Return to me” (See draft Below). On the backs an equal number include a recitation/ incantation we wrote in English and Spanish. Some were also printed with the testimony of a migrant detained at Otay Mesa Detention Center -- which we collected in partnership with the immigrant-rights organization “Freedom for Immigrants”. The candles are white – a color used to purify and protect in Mexican curanderismo/brujeria -- with dark blue ink -- a color associated with healing, reconciliation, and best intentions.
In total, we produced 130 of these custom candles to localize the polemic of immigration-enforcement/detention within the context of San Diego; since at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, migrants are held in “housing units” comprised of approximately 130 detainees.
For the opening of the exhibition, the public was invited to activate the sculpture, by taking part in a ceremonial lighting of all 130 candles, and issuing a collective call for liberation of migrant peoples and the abolishment of the carceral state.