Jasmine Campoya
The “Pasos Ajenos” exhibit located in the Centenary Museum depicts social justice and inequality in border regions. From exhibits to videos to posters, the museum offers information on issues that arise in our community.
Traveling to a new country to pursue a better life is a sacrifice that many migrants currently make on their journey to the United States. They flee due to circumstances such as violence, environmental factors, economic opportunities and other reasons. Recently, a record number of Venezuelans entered the United States from Mexico.
Considering the current immigration situation, the UTEP Centenary Museum hosted a new exhibition entitled “Pasos Ajenos: Social Justice and Inequalities in the Border Region”.
This exhibition was created to communicate the abstract concepts of oppression, racial inequality and power to a wider audience in the border regions. The title “Pasos Ajenos” aims to recognize our community and humanitarian capacity for empathy, solidarity and inclination for justice as we try to walk in the place of others.
“This is a collaboration with two New Mexico State University professors and their colleagues, artists and a carpenter who incorporated all of their ideas and made it a reality,” said Daniel Carey. -Whalen, director of the Centennial Museum and the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens. at UTP. “’Pasos Ajenos’ tells the story of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. It tells the story of the frontier through non-traditional lenses.
Some exhibits included:
- “Environmental Justice”
- “The Lottery”
- “Many Hands”
- “Omitted Stories”
- “Carmelita Torres and the Bath Riots”
- “Welcome to Texas”
- “Border Book”
- “Buffalo Troopers in the Borderlands”
- “State & Grace”
- “Who is a Migrant”
- “Work”
- “Community Basket”
- “See your social importance”
- “Cartography or perceptions”
- “Soundscape”
- “Good, Bad, Complicated”
- “Warning sign at the border”
- “Linguistic Toolkit”
- “Love Without Boundaries”
The exhibition presents many challenging topics in an interactive way. Museum visitors can learn about these things by playing card games, writing on the wall, a large cylinder with rotating segments, and many other interactive activities.
“Each of these vignettes deals with an issue on the border and often they talk about negative things that happened,” Carey-Whalen said. “It’s important to talk about this side of the story.”
One part of the exhibition that stands out from the rest is “Love Without Borders”. It incorporates a healing element to the exhibit. This art installation allows people to heal the division or boundaries they feel by sharing with another person. It features a wireframe telegram from one of the co-creator’s grandparents talking about the love they share and how they can’t wait to see each other again. This artwork is meant to show that love cannot be separated by a wall, love will always transcend boundaries.
“Our mission here is to focus on the cultural and natural history of this region. El Paso and Juarez are one community, but we are separated by this border,” Carey-Whalen said. “We love telling the story of the border community and telling those stories is important to us. I really like this exhibit because it helps us understand the complexities and it does so in a very fun way. »
The interactive exhibit is open from August 13 to March 4, 2023 at the Centennial Museum.
For more information, visit utep.edu/centennial-museum/
Alyson Rodriguez is a journalist and can be reached at [email protected]; @alyson_rod1127 on Twitter.
