A Group Exhibition at BCA Center Explores the Meanings of Migration

In the piping-hot cauldron of global issues, immigration consistently bubbles to the top. There is nothing easy about it, from the conditions that force people to leave their homes to the dangers on their journey to the often-unwelcoming reception in another land. And then there’s the politics: The very word “border” is an election-season cudgel.

It is not uncommon for artwork to evoke a sense of place, but in a current exhibition at the BCA Center in Burlington, place is considered in terms of fleeing it, finding it, or how that movement impacts everything and everyone. In “Here Now: Art and Migration,” seven national and international artists explore concepts of “borders, movement and migration across local urban centers and global geographies,” according to gallery text.

The artists were selected by cocurators Sarah Rogers, visiting assistant professor of the history of art and architecture at Middlebury College, and Heather Ferrell, BCA’s curator and director of exhibitions. The mediums are varied — installations, wall-hung 2D pieces, video and sculpture.

Despite the show’s weighty theme, the works are not as didactic as one might expect. Upon entering the Church Street gallery, visitors are greeted with what appears to be a bounty of blossoms suspended from the ceiling. In fact, it’s an installation titled “Scattered Seeds of the Cotton Bolls,” by Lydia Nakashima Degarrod.

The California-based artist and ethnographer has Japanese and Chilean lineage; her artist statement references family members who fled Japan during World War II, threats of deportation and internment, and losses of loved ones in the bombing of Hiroshima. Paradoxically, that traumatic history is conveyed quite subtly in the work’s materiality: mulberry and yerba buena fibers, embroidery, and photographic transfers on the 74 handmade flowers. Painted in reds and blues, the paper petals are attached with twine made to resemble barbed wire.

The cotton boll itself, the artist writes, “symbolizes the first wave of Japanese immigrants who worked the cotton plantations in Peru.” (Some later moved on to Chile.) Nakashima Degarrod’s family story is filled with transcultural upheaval and adaptation. It’s a testament to her spirit that she channels the legacy with such grace.

In contrast, three other installations in the gallery’s front room boldly compete for a viewer’s attention.

On one side is a pair of large-scale wall hangings constructed from yarn, willow, buckskin, beads, and artificial sinew and turf. Artist Teresa Baker is an enrolled member of North Dakota’s Three Affiliated Tribes and resides in Los Angeles. The intriguing shapes and color relationships within her mixed-media forms draw from her Mandan/Hidatsa culture, and the carpet-like material obliquely suggests landscape. Yet a viewer needn’t understand Baker’s references to appreciate her works; they can be seen as unique contemporary abstractions.

At BCA, the 95-by-31-inch “Transplanted” is both mysterious and suggestive; a tall, narrow piece with a totem quality and almost-surfboard shape. Its surface is divided horizontally into three parts, each covered with a different shade of artificial turf and further adorned with yarn and other materials. Baker’s “Low Pitched,” at roughly 78 by 93.5 inches, is such an unusual shape that it calls to mind an absurdly gerrymandered congressional district. But this artist’s interest in land and culture has spiritual, not political, roots, and the visceral quality of her work reflects that bond.

On the opposite side of the room, two installations by Verónica Gaona employ vehicular components to address transnational communities that routinely cross the U.S.-Mexico border. As gallery text explains, the Houston-based artist “utilizes the aesthetics and materials of trokiando subculture — including truck panels, chrome plates and bald tires.” Trokiando refers to the customized-truck scene, though in Gaona’s work it might represent freedom of movement as much as a lifestyle.

“Migrant Metropolis (To know and to dream at the same time series)” consists of Ford F-150 body parts and photographs printed on aluminum sheets, arranged on the wall and the floor. The eight components suggest not only a truck but a culture deconstructed.

Gaona’s stark 88-by-120-by-24-inch installation “Trans—-fer” looks to be simply black tire tracks running horizontally across the white wall with a bald truck tire standing upright in front of them. But the label identifies the ingenious details: rubber dust and Ford F-150 window glass dust embedded in acrylic paint. The painstaking gesture is invisible to viewers — much like assimilated cultures.

Two video artists included in “Here Now” address freedom of movement, or lack thereof, in very different ways. In his five-minute single-channel work “I Can See You,” Iraqi artist Sajjad Abbas captures an act of resistance in Baghdad against a repressive government that surveils its citizens. Brazilian-born, Vermont-based Paula Higa considers the complexities of human mobility through choreography in her 12-minute dance film “The Migrant Body.”

Born in Puerto Rico and now living in Chicago, Edra Soto examines “notions of displacement and belonging within colonial histories,” according to gallery text. She does so in part through the language, and legacy, of architecture and design.

In the BCA’s back room, two 92.5-by-57-inch, double-layered sintra boards titled “Graft I” and “Graft V” hang side by side. Covered with flower-shaped cutouts, they resemble the screens that provide both ventilation and visual protection in vernacular Puerto Rican architecture. As wall text explains, the floral motif was originally imported from Africa during the slave trade. Thus, the term “graft” assumes a multifaceted meaning.

Soto’s panels present a literal opportunity to look deeper: Tiny viewfinders are embedded at the center of the petals. Visitors should not miss the opportunity to peek at what lies within. The artist employs a similar combination of cutout designs and viewfinders on a pair of smaller works, also from her “Graft” series. This benign cultural voyeurism contrasts with the dire implications of surveillance in Abbas’ video.

Matthew Schrader, an assistant professor of studio art at Middlebury College, illustrates another type of migration — one resulting in transformation of the physical landscape. His installation titled “M. Obultra 3” consists of framed woodcuts, photographs, painted wood objects, transparencies, Ailanthus altissima seed pods and a long vitrine table. The collection seems like it might be more at home in a botanical museum, but its presence in this exhibit has purpose.

The Ailanthus altissima — also known as the tree of heaven and the less elegant stinking sumac — is native to parts of China and Taiwan. The plant grows at an alarming rate, and its aggressive root system can damage just about anything in the built environment. When it spreads, it is known to bring invasive insects along for the ride — and the destruction. Though Schrader’s installation focuses on a hostile takeover in the plant world, it might be seen as a metaphor for the consequences of human displacement, as well.

Regardless of species, migration means constant change, often faster than the pace of adaptation. If 21st-century existence can seem aligned with the Everything Everywhere All at Once metaverse, this exhibition’s artists seem to say, “We are here now. Deal with it.”

This article appears in Mar 20-26, 2024.

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