I've been stitching a new series based partly on words and images from Human Rights Watch's recent report "You Don't Have Rights Here": US Border Screening and Return of Central Americans to Risk of Serious Harm. In the past, my work on immigration has emphasized how workers in the Braceros program understood their experiences. The current series pictures potential and actual migrants' bodies in dangerous places. In this work-in-progress, a young girl walks gingerly through a sewage-filled road in Honduras. The embroidery is framed with deep indigo-blue handwoven "corte" clothe (usually used by Central American women for traditional skirts).
Another piece, not so far along, closes in on the scarred leg of a young man--a victim of gang gunfire--who tried to escape his violent Honduran town but was quickly returned. More about that piece later.