The Exodus Seriese

The Exodus Series is an extension of my Encoded Textiles project, begun five years ago after my return trip from working with Mapuche weavers in my home country of Chile. The project combined QR codes woven into traditional textile designs by Mapuche weavers. When scanned with a smartphone, the woven “QR codes” take the viewer into a filmic world of story, myth and reflection by Mapuche elders, activists and poets. This new Exodus Series expands these technologies and techniques (weaving, filmmaking, oral history) into new terrains by focusing on border crossings and the Latin American indigenous diaspora of Mayan and Zapotec peoples living in Los Angeles. My work plays on the idea of “borders” by framing the experience of trans-migrants in their own words through film and audio recordings embedded in textile or objects, and portrays the dizzying effects of migratory crossings in the urban global economy of L.A. This new approach to investigative art-making explores the contradictions that come with that crossing, when the hope of the American Dream is met with the dark side of living in its shadows (Figure 1)