Thanh Nguyen

19 July 2012

In spring quarter, I took a class called “Show Me Your PAPERS: Immigration, Youth, Print-Making & Story-Telling for Social Change.” I was to conceptualize, design, carve, and print a migrant-justice themed political poster for my class. This is one of the 24 prints/copies I made from my linoleum block. It’s not perfect, obvs. I have photos of my classmates’ works, but I probably shouldn’t just throw them out there without asking, lol.

I call it “The Separation of Adam.” It’s not too obvious what I was trying to get at in the poster, which is my own fault in the design process. I replaced the cherubs/angels from Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” with ICE agents, Joe Arpaio, Barak Obama, Jan Brewer, and George H.W. Bush to comment on their anti-immigrant practices. I guess I just wanted to address popular rhetoric(s) dehumanizing undocumented folks in this country. They’re people, too, you know? With families, lives, hopes, dreams, fears, and beating hearts. Yet so many families are fractured because some children are forbidden to join their parents when deported, so many people are denied due process and proper trials because apparently you don’t get them if you don’t have a sheet of paper to legitimize your existence, and a lot of other messed up stuff. As an artistic response to that, I just threw in a decapitated Statue of Liberty (lol stole/appropriated it from Cloverfield) and what I think she should say instead of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.“ Yeah. I digress.

Anyways, I just wanted to share my own art and (small) activism in the midst of all my Pokemon, Avatar, Community, K-Pop, Disney Princess, Miyazaki, Digimon, and magical princess stuff.