Gareth Smit

Started in 2018 through a Magnum Foundation grant, this project combines poetry and photography to investigate the intersection of religion and migration in the borderlands of Arizona and Sonora, the ancestral land of the Tohono O’odham.

This section of the U.S.-Mexico border separates not only the Tohono O’odham people, but their sacred sites and ancestral land. Since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and later the Gadsden Purchase, the O’odham were repeatedly divided and clustered by federal laws.

The threat of the wall being built on the border is a threat to their sovereignty. Today, the desert is a scene of violence and brutality. Overwhelmed by U.S. immigration policies, migrants cross the desert risking their lives. Adding to the death and destruction on ancestral land is a generalized state of violence along the border. Entire towns, like Cu:wi I-gersk, have been abandoned as the O’odham fled for their safety.

Photography of the border often reflects the dualism it portrays: we see either the Mexican side or the U.S. side, since the photographer is embedded with a migrant caravan, or the border patrol. This collaboration seeks to suspend the dualism and, through poetry and photography, enter a space of reflection about what remains when the border is not there.

The Place Where Clouds Are Formed

Featuring: Gareth Smit Ofelia Zepeda Martín Zícari

Curated by: Kristen Lubben

Locations

• #Displacement
• #Immigrant Stories
• #Indigenous Voices
• #Mexico-US