Immigrants

In my series, the “Naked Immigrants,” I explore the loss of identity immigrants go through when they are forced to leave their homes and dive into the unknown. Immigrants go through such hardship and pain that it often leads them to become mere shells of humans that experience a severe loss in identity. For example, an immigrant loses its language. For an immigrant, its mother language turns into something personal and to be hidden within the dark walls of their own home. Their voices are silenced, their identities are stripped, and they are forced to restart their life completely naked. Immigration is a concept that is dearly personal to me as it is something I have been through throughout my life. The figures I have featured in these paintings are symbolic representations of this loss of identity. The sculpted blank faces on the canvas, the clinging of the figures to each other, and the covered up mouths representing the forced silence.