The second instalment of The Neighbours, an on-going exhibition series at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York that examines cultural uprooting, belonging and social mobility, opened this month with a dialogue between two concurrent solo shows on immigration, Andrea Bowers: Sanctuary and Andrea Aragón: Home (until 12 February 2017). Sanctuary features installations and drawings by the Los Angeles-based artist Bowers that were inspired by interviews she conducted with an undocumented Mexican woman who took political asylum in a church in Chicago and became estranged from her American-born son when she was deported in 2007. It also includes drawings Bowers created for the installation No Olvidado (Not Forgotten) (2010) to memorialise the names of people who died attempting to cross the US border from Mexico, and new drawings that depict rallies of the US immigration reform activist group Keeping Families Together. Home shows a series of photographs shot between 2000-16 by the Guatemala City-based photographer Aragón of groups and individuals who emigrated to the US, juxtaposed with images of their native communities, expressing the melancholy that is sometimes present in post-relocation life and how immigration can impact identity. The third instalment of the series will open at the museum in spring 2017.
