An artists video shows the constraints of life in immigration limbo.
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But he had never been held inside, or even visited, an institution like this.
Some got caught at the border.
How can art help people heal?
I connect my trauma to my illness.
When he visited the teenagers in 2017, he worked with them to make their own masks.
As the teens respond good-naturedly to Maravillas prompts What were you doing at 1 p.m.?
the limited, repetitive nature of their lives becomes clear.
They make a run at sugarcoat it by calling it Childrens Village.
They take a stab at make it seem different.
At the end its the same thing: youre being separated from your family.
Youre there against your will, and someone is profiting off you.
Its a gated, fenced-in area with little houses.
Thats all they get.
This is what they do every day.
Youre a teenager losing two, three years in there.
I went there to do a workshop with the artistShellyne Rodriguez.
I start talking about how ritual and mask-making have a bond, and I show examples.
They start guessing, and they cant figure it out.
After that Im like, Okay, lets make something.
Think of your ancestors, based on what I showed you, and make your own mask.
We bring out pieces of cardboard and construction paper everything to decorate.
They all made their own masks that they were wearing.
The boys were pretty hard they were under 16 and all had tattoos already.
Some were in gangs.
But they were still children.
They were very sweet.
Some had been in there 14 months, and some had been there three months.
They didnt know what was going to happen.
It was different for the girls and we had to be more sensitive.
They still connected with me, but it took longer.
At the end, they didnt want me to leave; they were hugging me and crying.
They were more scared than the boys.
I mean Im sure the boys were scared too, but it was different.
The boys were down to just play.
The video shows a performance exercise I learned from Malik Gaines, who was my professor at Hunter College.
It kind of illustrates what theyre going through.
The video, honestly, was very casual.
Im surprised it came out so beautifully.
I was not planning on it.
Shellyne shot it on a phone.
Theyre gonna be wearing masks.
And they said okay.
The kids were really excited they wanted to be photographed.
Guadalupe Maravilla (born El Salvador, 1976).
Shellyne Rodriguez, videographer.Detention Center Performance, 2022.
Single-channel video (color, sound): 5 mins., 13 sec.
Courtesy of the artist and P.P.O.W.
Gallery, New York.
The experience of being in the position to give back and help is really important for me.
Eventually, the war got so bad that they flew my grandmother out and left us with our nanny.
My sisters paperwork cleared, so they flew her over.
There were bombs falling in my neighborhood; machine guns were shooting through the house where I was staying.
My parents were like, If he stays there, hes not gonna live.
So they hired someone to bring me over.
I went by land from El Salvador to Honduras, Guatemala, and all the way through Mexico.
It was a two-and-a-half-month journey.
The coyotes took me from house to house to house.
Sometimes in a car, sometimes on a train, sometimes walking.
I would get passed on to another person and another person.
There was already kind of a structure for kids to be taken from one place to the other.
But I couldnt learn English.
I cant see you.
The Border Patrol just glanced at the dog and let us through.
My motivation was I didnt want to go back.
Going forward was not scary; getting caught and being sent back, that was scary.
Listening to bombs fall in your neighborhood is the most terrifying thing.
Thats what I remember: Your house shakes.
Constant helicopters and machine guns going off.
With all these communities I work with, you have to build trust.
First, lets talk; well play this game.
Next thing, were making masks.
Next, we do a performance.
If they see me again, theyre gonna really start trusting me.
Then I can talk to them about sound healing.
I can teach them meditation after that, and it will all start connecting.
After I made this video with the teenagers, I wanted to go every week.
I wanted them to know theyre not alone.
I wanted to give them advice on how they can get through.
We were scheduling some dates but Trump had just been elected.
The people that worked there were terrified.
All of a sudden, they cut us off.
The lady that had let us in was no longer there.
Even with the Brooklyn Museum, were trying to get back in, and theyre very flaky.
There was white ash falling everywhere.
The name of the show, Tierra Blanca Joven, translates to young white ash.
Also, the objects in the collection are displaced, because they dont belong in this country.
I went through so many obstacles, and Im doing this with my art now.
I hope the kids I met are gonna have the same outcome that I had.
But a lot will probably get deported back to El Salvador, Honduras, or wherever they were escaping.
This video sat for years.
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