Lee en español
An earth-toned cactus, lightly touched with green brushstrokes, stretches its arms toward the Arizona sky beneath two clouds outlined in deep blue. The cactus is Rosa, a 9-year-old Colombian girl who chose to paint herself this way before she and her family decided to self-deport. She titled the piece “Adiós Tucson.”
Next to the cactus appears the figure of a man with long, gray, dark arms the color of asphalt. He is the father of a 9-year-old boy who was deported and driven away from his family. His arms stretch like endless roads, and in his stomach he carries an excavator — the job that supported the family. The boy titled it “Me quiero ir.”
“That’s what his father did, and it symbolizes the visceral pain of losing him,” said Rosa in Spanish, a psychologist and curator of the exhibition Arte de la Resistencia. She asked that her last name be withheld for safety reasons. The exhibit ran from May 13 to May 17.
Tucked in an alley behind the commercial corridor of Fourth Avenue, Free Associates — a small building converted into a gallery with a pistachio-green door and a window air-conditioning unit — housed an art exhibit that held the pain of deportations and portrayed the wounds of migrant life.
“The children and youth who participate have all been in workshops processing emotional conflicts, family situations related to migration issues, or are affected by ICE,” Rosa said softly…