Laura De Valencia

The series reflects on my experiences at 'El Consultorio,' a house adjacent to my grandparents’ dental practice in Barranquilla, Colombia. Often, after business hours, I would sneak into 'El Consultorio' to play secretary with their appointment books or try my hand as a little scientist, mixing alginate and mercury.

These works aim to capture the language barriers my grandparents faced at an older age during their immigration to the United States — challenges I also experienced when, at 24, I emigrated to live with them in Gainesville, FL. The series explores the dichotomy between the carefree moments of the past and the bodily pain associated with both dentistry and the complexities of our collective immigration journey.

The fiber pieces on the series are emblazoned with twisted versions of the store name “Ross” to read other words that describe universal experiences of the immigrant— words such as "loss,” “toss,” or “serve.”

I print the words on different cleaning supplies and indumentary that resembles the ones I used on cleaning jobs that paid for occasional shopping sprees at Ross, a space where I remember experiencing the first glimpses of an elusive American Dream when I first arrived to Florida in 2007.

Ross Stores is also a space where many immigrants like myself negotiate through consumption of clothing how much to let go of our national identity in order to blend in American culture and how much to preserve in order to stand out; without exoticizing ourselves.

The series explores recurrent themes in my work such as belonging, labor, and the act of dressing as an immigrant.

I use the app MapMyWalk to trace my father’s lawnmower paths when he cuts grass at other people’s homes, a job that doesn’t require more interaction and that he chose to do when he emigrated to the United States at an age in which he felt incapable of learning English. I set MapMyWalk on the “wheelchair setting” so my dad’s mower movement could be detected by the app.

Through the act of recording his movement I attempt to validate my father’s labor as a form of language.

In addition, the works invites to think about perimeters as they are experienced by the immigrant. The stability of solid constructions in contrast with the spontaneity of human movement. The places that are allowed and the places we can only dream of. Demarcations, manicured lawns, perfectly planned neighborhoods as portraits of the American dream. I also think about how, even though my dad can walk, he can’t speak the language, which at his age may feel like a disability that he challenges through daily labor.

I compare the structured representation of geographical features through rigid grids and geometry with the free-flowing, spontaneous essence of human movement, which I express using organic, gestural lines.

When I transform sketches into paintings, I explore the idea of loss, much like how subtle nuances can disappear when speaking in a foreign language.

Exhibition at the FSU museum of art, 2021.

This series confronts our relationship to the idea of “Latinidad” which is in most cases limited to the ornamental and circumscribed to certain spaces such as the authentic restaurant or the home decor section at department stores.

The material for these pieces was sourced from spoonflower.com, a website that sells custom printed fabric. Colorful patterns are offered by Spoonflower.com under the “worldly” category and they are uploaded by designers in the United States, whom feel inspired by “warm and colorful” Latin prints. I screenshot the interface of spoonflower.com showing the appropriated designs and re-upload them as a new design of my authorship, for spoonflower.com to print.

In other instances, I screenshot fragments of the labels (colorful! Party! Mexican!) used by designers to sell the prints and I create collages with the colorful patterns they offer, and re-upload them as a new design of my own for spoonflower.com to print.

“Language and law, boundaries and territory, citizenship and rights—these are only a few of the fundamental correspondences that the fluvial geomorphology of the Rio Grande River both narrate and problematize.” Jesse Vogler.

The process of channel change that occurs within existing river banks is recognized as alluvion in international law. When the river changes its course, the border moves with it. This phenomenon confirms that river boundaries are not fixed lines, which makes the boundary mobile; illegible. The work highlights how human-made border demarcations are challenged by inherently borderless systems such as nature and language. Language becomes soil, soil becomes language.

This drawing is informed by my work as a Spanish translator in a public elementary school in Tallahassee, FL, where I assist newly arrived immigrant children who have no knowledge of the English language to communicate with their teachers and understand their lessons.

To create this piece, I re-draw a children's notebook with lines that are generated by spectrogram interpretations of the sounds that immigrants hear during a typical school day. These lines form a visual representation of the language barriers that these children face, which end up resembling the US-Mexico border that many of them once crossed. The piece highlights how this border continues to manifest in different forms, including language barriers.

The Language of Silence (Margenes)
Drawing on wood
10x10”
2023

Mixed media on canvas. 24x36”. 2023

I make a poncho out of handwoven Colombian fabric and paint red dots representing migrant bodies found in the US-Mexico border, based on data provided by the Migrant Death Mapping put together by the organization Humane Borders in partnership with the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The poncho is washed by migrants hands until the red ink comes off with water, not without leaving an indelible mark on the fiber.

Mixed media
34x20”
2020

I created this artwork by depicting fragments from my grandfather's English lesson books in the style of traditional English Samplers. The lessons focused on how to clean and maintain a home.

Traditionally, English Samplers were embroidered linen panels made by young girls to showcase their needlework skills. These pieces were often displayed as art in households, featuring various elements such as alphabets, family names, decorative borders, pictorial designs, and religious or moral verses.

In my version of Samplers, I use white thread to obscure the language commonly used for tradition preservation. Through this, I question the immigrant's role in maintaining American beauty standards in other people's domestic spaces (typically though cleaning, gardening, and construction) while being denied citizenship to legally establish stable homes in their place of work

I draw the border line on a cotton t-shirt. The line fades with the sweat produced by my body after dancing for 1.5 hours.

Language from ‘Ingles sin Barreras” wet transfered on dental plaster, disposable plate. 2023

Sambenito was a penitential garment used by condemned heretics during the Spanish Inquisition.

After heretics were killed for their sins, their sambenitos were hung up in the churches as mementos of disgrace to their families, and as the trophies of the Holy Inquisition.

Sambenito was a penitential garment used by condemned heretics during the Spanish Inquisition.

After heretics were killed for their sins, their sambenitos were hung up in the churches as mementos of disgrace to their families, and as the trophies of the Holy Inquisition.