"Salon de los Ilegales" by Carlos Frésquez

I have painted a silhouette running family, “a ready-made added” from the yellow highway caution signs into these found landscapes. These caution signs once appeared on the U. S. Mexico border, placed there to warn drivers to watch for running Mexican families or people crossing the roads. The landscapes presented here display a range of the U. S. soil painted by unknown individuals, from the mid-west to the southwest deserts. Having painted the running family into someone else’s landscape, I “illegally” place a representation of the Mexican into their Utopia. Therefore, by placing the running family into these landscapes I am documenting the undocumented. It is a document of the current and constant influx of Mexican immigrant into the United States. The Mexican immigrant is in every state of the Union. These people are sometimes shadows and faceless in our society. The hanging of the artwork, in the academic “salon style”, elevates the work in the status, as portraits and landscapes, of the Mexican migrant family.