Arleene Correa Valencia’s exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts reveals the indelible imprint of growing up as an undocumented migrant through personal writings, photographs, and textiles.
salt 16: Arleene Correa Valencia
November 15, 2024–June 29, 2025
Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City
How would living as an undocumented migrant for twenty-five years shape your identity? Arleene Correa Valencia’s recent body of work is rooted in her experience as a member of an undocumented migrant family. Born in Mexico, Correa Valencia immigrated as a child to the United States where her family settled in California’s Napa Valley. She was often separated from her father for long stretches of time as he searched for work as a house painter. Yo No Me Olvido de Ti/I Have Not Forgotten You (2024), a site-specific mural at the exhibition’s entrance, is a precursor to the poignancy of the works that follow. Collaged with excerpts of letters to her father, she assures him that he’s loved and not forgotten, ending with an urgent plea to take her with him. Now a permanent resident in her thirties and thriving as an artist in the San Francisco Bay Area, her appreciation of her parents’ sacrifices deepens within her multi-layered, mixed-media expressions.
Personal writings, photographs, and traditional domestic arts, such as sewing, embroidery, and appliqué, are potent resources in forging her identity and reconciling the internalized otherness that congealed within the confines of her California community. Her large-scale, mixed-media works on amate, a type of bark paper manufactured in Mexico since pre-contact times, depict scenes inspired by family snapshots. Although she clothes the images of family members with actual garments and elaborately embroidered appliqué in El Rancho/The Ranch (2024), she portrays the limbs and faces of the figures as featureless outlines. Filled in with the gray reflective material found on safety vests, the artist challenges the viewers to face their assumptions and somewhat distorted projections of this invisible population.
The meticulous and repetitive nature of stitching in the works refers to the slow, deliberate process of repairing the “open wound” of immigration, inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s metaphor of the U.S.-Mexico border as a site of pain and trauma. Through intricate needlework, Correa Valencia stitches together narratives of displacement and endurance, creating tactile landscapes that blend memory with resilience.
