‘Shift the paradigm’: An exhibition at Philly’s Imperfect Gallery celebrates immigrant and international voices

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Sculptor Jose Lemus was 11 years old when his mother got deported, and his family was left fractured.

He transferred that pain and trauma into a sculpture depicting a mother figure standing with arms raised protectively in front of her face, trying to move forward, her feet mired in mud while a child clings to her right ankle.

Lemus’ story and sculpture are one voice in a chorus of artistic works featured in “Indivisible: A Celebration of Immigrants, Refugees and the Pursuit of Freedom” at Philadelphia’s Imperfect Gallery.

The exhibit is a forest of texture and color by immigrant artists shedding light on their lived experiences in the United States through mixed media, paintings, sculptures, video and text pieces, photos and virtual reality. There is joy and pain, longing and community, tradition and visions of the future.

“When you’re in this room, you are embodied by [the artists],” Imperfect Gallery artistic director Renny Molenaar said. “When you walk into an exhibit in some galleries, you walk into it and it’s sterile and it’s very cold, and you want to tiptoe and hold your hands [behind] your back and whisper. Here, people are laughing. It’s a different feeling.”

For Lemus, making the sculpture and excavating that memory was a “catharsis” that proved healing. He is also aware that his deeply personal creation articulates a reality that is all too common — the separation of families and the struggles of immigrant parents in the United States.

“I know many other immigrant children had to face a certain situation like that, of some family member being deported or other family members being deported,” Lemus said. “And the pain that goes with that situation.”

Jasmine Rivera, Indivisible’s co-curator, said the purpose of the show grew in part out of her experience with an exhibition of the art and organizing history from the Shut Down Berks campaign, an activist effort that led to the shuttering of the Berks County Detention Center in 2023.

Rivera said that, though less concrete in its objective, the Indivisible exhibition is also responding to and addressing the current political moment.

“This year has been very hard,” she said.

Rivera, who is also the executive director of the advocacy organization Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, said since 2016, there have been “non-stop attacks on the immigrant community.”

“It is both the rhetoric and the policy that is attacking folks in the immigrant community,” she said.

Rivera works a lot in policy, but said she has seen firsthand how art can “shift the paradigm” to change the rhetoric and address misinformation about immigrants at the local and national levels.

“Art plays such a vital and crucial role to that larger, more intangible work that is ever present in any society,” she said.

She said it was important for the exhibition to celebrate immigrant artists and communities, and “paint the nuance” of a militarized U.S.-Mexico border, the expanding detention centers, ongoing deportations and families being separated.

“That is the backdrop going on in our nation, while we are simultaneously finding the joy and finding time to celebrate our immigrant community in the Philadelphia region,” Rivera said.

Chela Ixcopal, co-curator and an artist featured in the exhibition, said he wants visitors to sit with the complexity of experiences and emotions.

“I would hope that they get angry, they get confused, they get a lot of emotions about it, I want them to start thinking critically about this exhibition, and start talking about it with other people,” they said. “Because this is such a big topic right now, especially towards the campaign that’s going to be coming up, voting is coming up. And both sides, Democrat or Republican, have always talked about immigration rights badly. I just want people to get educated about it. So that way, when they do vote, they’re able to vote in a critical thinking way.”

Yaqeen Yamani, a Palestinian photographer and artist studying at Temple University, offered her perspective as an international student.

Her work includes “Those Who Love You Will Feed You Pomegranates,” a video installation, and a text piece called “Checking In,” a collective work created from actual text messages Palestinians in the U.S. and Palestinian-Americans have received, both before and during the current Israel-Gaza War. The formatted texts show the absence of the words “Palestinian” or “Palestine” from many people’s messages of care.

“For me and many others, it is an act of erasure, when you don’t really acknowledge where we are from when you are trying to ask about us, and our families, and how we’re doing during this time,” Yamani said.

Yamani said art is “powerful and needed,” and plays an important role in naming and bridging gaps in understanding.

“It was scary for me being here and looking at the way that the news was talking about us, and the way people talk about Palestinians,” she said. “This is an opportunity for all of us to learn how to come together in a way to really show care, and at the same time recognition … I think about my work as a chance for learning.”

Rocio Cabello, co-founder of Imperfect Gallery, said the exhibition also offers a chance for immigrants to come together and examine their shared experiences. Cabello, who moved to the U.S. from Peru as a teenager, recognized the many layers of immigrant life in the works on display.

“When you are doing this on your own, or with your own family, you don’t know how universal that experience is until you meet somebody that comes from a whole other side of the world,” she said. “And yet, they had the same exact experience of wanting to belong, assimilating, but not too much … you still want to hang on to your things.”

As an educator at Puentes de Salud, an immigrant-serving organization in South Philadelphia, Lemus said he has witnessed the impact art can have and stressed the need for more funding for arts opportunities for immigrant communities.

“Through art, they get to share a lot of their experiences, not just to their community, but to other groups or other communities to share and express the realities that we face,” he said. “I think that we need to find ways to make art accessible to not just our community, but all  marginalized or low income communities, because … it’s a way of finding yourself.”

Indivisible is on display through Aug. 3, and more details can be found online. The gallery and curators will be hosting a block party on Saturday, July 27, from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.