First conceived in 2005, Immigration Services assumes new urgency today. Revisiting the work two decades after Mayobre first performed it highlights Venezuela’s transformation, from a nation once buoyed by oil-fuelled socialist hopes to one with the world’s second-largest displacement crisis, with more than eight million people fleeing economic collapse and political repression. The work’s title and arrangement evoke the long, uncertain wait of migrants and asylum seekers striving for legal status and stability. Playing with her name, Mayobre constructs an iconoclastic figure of devotion: Virgen de la Esperanza, Nuestra Señora Madre de los Inmigrantes (Virgin of Hope, Our Mother of the Immigrants). Dressed as a Catholic Madonna, the artist transforms herself into a saint holding a passport, a wad of dollars, and a green card – an irreverent reflection on the American Dream that fuels South-North migration.
Francisco Llinas
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