Lost & Found

The photographs of Moysés Zúñiga Santiago narrate the perilous and always uncertain journey of Central American migrants across Mexico’s southern border, travelling north through Mexico towards the United States. In the face of deeply systemic, imperialist violence and oppression, thousands of people are forced to flee their homes and communities in search of anything better—they have few other options. In their liminal quest for a better life, migrants risk unspeakably harsh conditions as they traverse hostile migratory terrain. In Moysés Zúñiga Santiago’s photographs we bear witness to the lives, bodies and spirits of those who have been rendered invisible by overlapping systems of political, economic and social inequity. 

Fleeing poverty and violence at home, these onward passages pose a myriad of dangerous uncertainties—rape, torture, dehydration, robbery, human smuggling, armed border control forces, kidnapping, disappearance and death. The eyes, faces, and expressions in these photos are poignant reminders of all that is ignored and hidden in arbitrary systems of extreme inequality and injustice. Zúñiga Santiago’s photos reveal not only the harrowing Mexican migratory struggle and quest for survival endured daily by many, but also the humanity, sorrow, vulnerability, and grace with which each of these individuals carry on living, moving forward into uncertain futures.

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Lost and Found. Artscape – Daniels Spectrum, Toronto, ON. October 5-9, 2017.

Photographic Exhibition as part of Unsettling the Americas – Radical Hospitalities and Intimate Geographies featuring work by Moysés Zúñiga Santiago. 

Curated by Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan