Entry & egress: 'Puertas fronterizas' looks at the symbolic door as it relates to the immigrant experience

Doors form points of entry, access, passage, movement, exit and escape.

Metaphorically, they signify opportunity, uncertainty, hope, change and transition.

Open at the Albuquerque Museum, “Puertas fronterizas/Border Doors” is an exhibition of student work done between 2019 and 2024 contemplating the symbolic door — unlike a border wall or fence — as it relates to the immigrant experience.

Entry & egress: 'Puertas fronterizas' looks at the symbolic door as it relates to the immigrant experience

Since 2014, Claudio Pérez, a Spanish teacher at Sandia Preparatory School, has taken his advanced Spanish language students to El Paso where they interact with immigrants and advocates at the Cristo Rey Border Immersion Program. When they return home, they illustrate a series of doors telling the stories of the people they have met, as well as the major themes of immigration at the border.

“This is all work done by high school students over the last 10 years,” said curator Alicia Romero. “They meet people who have recently arrived — authenticated or unauthenticated. They hear their stories about how they crossed the border, and they share a meal.

“I think their goal is to put a human face to the immigration debate,” Romero added.

The mixed-media doors featured in the exhibition are interpretative collages and paintings of five central issues relating to immigration: artificial intelligence and immigration; COVID-19 and essential workers; kids in cages; family separation; and superheroes and immigration, which highlights the victims of the 2019 El Paso Walmart mass shooting.

The exhibition showcases about 40 doors donated, scavenged and purchased for the project.

Michael Pratt’s 2020 piece “Abra La Puerta A Todas Las Familias (Open the Door to All Families)” features images of the American flag and the Statue of Liberty.

“That’s the only trifold we have,” Romero said. Pratt added the poem by Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” in Spanish.

Pratt also placed the image of a freight train on the back, a frequent means of immigrant transportation.

“They ride on the tops of freight trains, on the roof,” Romero said. “They are routinely mugged. They can also be raped. It is an incredibly dangerous mode of transportation.”

Jayne Clifton Fife painted a composition of two jailed children in 2019. The background consists of spray-painted newspaper.

“This was particularly heinous during the Trump administration, when children were separated from their parents,” Romero said.

In 2023, Kiki Rodriguez also addressed family separation with string attached to immigrants’ hands leading to a graveyard.

Also in 2023, Sonya Patel painted a pair of hands tied together with a spool of thread. Beneath it stand a mother and child threatened with scissors. She added the words: “A broken immigration system means broken families and broken lives” in Spanish.

Doors open and close; the border doors shown here demonstrate the passageway of people and their dreams for a better life.

Artists participating in this project include: HiiLani Alderete, Ajmain Ashraf, Hasnain Ashraf, Mohammed Assed, Daniela Baca, Benjamin Bartlett, Luke Bemish, Jack Bilan, Patrick Blewett, Charlotte Clark-Slakey, Stephen Emeanuwa, Kaden Epstein, Javin Felipe, Jayne Clifton Fife, Alexandria Forrester, Ava Garcia-Wesley, Jacob Gutiérrez, Caden Hallenbeck, Gillian Hoffman, Dylan Holtrop, Lillian King, Cedar McCall, Rowan McJimsey, Robert McWilliams, Jacob Montoya, Mary Montoya, Trina Nguyen, Sonya Patel, Carlos Pérez, Michael Pratt, Kiki Rodríguez, Emily Sanchez, Julia Silva, Lauren Staples and Jaxon Tregembo.