The “Grabando Historias” Exhibition by Christie Tirado demonstrates how art can help rewrite migration history.
“Grabando Historias,” an exhibition by Christie Tirado, made its debut March 10 at Madison’s Tandem Press art gallery. Through portraiture and the intensive practice of printing, Tirado depicts what is present, what is erased and what is preserved in narratives surrounding immigrant, migrant, familial and agricultural stories in America.
This exhibition celebrates stories untold and invites us to think: as Americans, how does our collective understanding of migration omit the realities of family life, and how do we rely on migrant support in our day-to-day life? These questions come to life through Tirado’s portraits, lithographs intaglio and relief linoleum reduction prints.
“Art has the power to tell the stories that history books often omit. It provides personal, visual and emotional connection to heritage whether through symbolism or portraiture or process,” Tirado told The Daily Cardinal.
Tirado is a bicultural Mexican American interdisciplinary artist and K-12 educator. After working as a teacher for eight years, Tirado is currently a second-year University of Wisconsin-Madison Master of Fine Arts Candidate and graduate research scholar.
Tirado’s work centers on labor-related migration, Mexican migration and interconnected cultural and societal narratives. As she carves, layers and removes the structural components of her printed artwork, she contemplates how this mirrors the realities of stories that go unnoticed in America. Immigrants and migrant workers are fundamental in maintaining America’s agricultural industries, and foreign workers ensure our food supply is sustained by disproportionate numbers. Still, immigrant and migrant labor goes overlooked due to stigma, falsehoods and dehumanization.
“Historically, the United States has relied on a lot of immigrant labor work, whether it's for railroad construction, agriculture or other industries. The foundation of this nation was built on the backs of immigrants. Yet their contributions to this nation are always overlooked,” said Tirado.
In this exhibition, we see these stories peeled back. They reveal family lineage, labor and love.
With “grabando,” meaning engrave or record, and “historias,” referring to both stories and histories, Tirado literally carves the tales of her family and workers into her abundant prints while figuratively making note of how these narratives are often erased.
Tirado shared insight into a moment shared with her grandfather before embarking on her one-month artist-in-residency program in Veracruz, Mexico. As her grandfather plowed the Earth and she followed behind, dropping corn beads, she took a photo of him, which became the basis of a lithograph. In carving her artwork, she found a connection between her artwork and her passion for sharing untold stories.
“Just as my grandfather labored over the land, I labored over the stone, and at the end of the residency, I had to erase that image, so I had to regrain the stone again with the levigator, the grit and the water, until the image slowly disappeared,” Tirado said. “This longing to capture and hold onto these moments led me to create this work that oftentimes goes recorded or unnoticed.”
Viewers will find symbols, motifs and metaphors as well as portraits of Tirado’s family within “Grabando Historias.” Symbols include Mexican cactuses and agaves. The butterfly in her self-portrait represents migration, she said. These symbols tie to her national roots, bringing light to the importance of national identity.
The Story, “Las Manos de mi Padre,” is an extension of the familial connections between Tirado, her father and her artwork. This piece, on her website and supplementing her artwork, was written by Tirado to capture a specific moment in time. Tirado shared that through her father’s hands, who have held jobs and roles as a father and worker and peeled back a pomegranate, she illuminated his experience as an immigrant living out American life.
Tirado previously worked in the Yakima Valley as an educator in Washington, where 49.1% of the agricultural workforce is composed of immigrants, 19.8% of its labor force is foreign-born and 32.8% of STEM workers are immigrants in the state, according to the American Immigration Council.
In the Union Gap School District of Yakima, she worked in an agriculture community of roughly 50% Latine and Hispanic residents, according to Tirado, who became increasingly aware of the gaps in visibility that the labor contributions of migrant and immigrant communities faced.
“This invisibility was something that I had witnessed growing up as well being the daughter of Mexican immigrants, and as a response, I began creating prints that rendered these communities visible, honoring and celebrating their backgrounds,” said Tirado, whose family’s own persistence and resilience is made present in her work.
“As artists and as journalists we can amplify these stories by documenting and archiving them and incorporating them into educational spaces,” said Tirado.
“Grabando Historias” remains on display at the Tandem Press gallery on 1743 Commercial Avenue until April 4.