Mónica Enríquez-Enríquez is a queer person of color, born and raised in
Colombia who migrated to the U.S. in 2001. She has an M.F.A in Digital Arts and
New Media from University of California Santa Cruz. Her interdisciplinary
interests include community based video installations, community art and issues
of migration and anti-criminalization. Her project “fragments of migration”
interrogates the institution of asylum in the U.S. based on sexual identity and
gender identity. “un/binding desires” documents the stories of queer immigrants
and children of immigrant parents around issues of belonging, desire and
identity. Art is for her a site for community activism and participation as
well as a site to question institutional oppression and challenge normative
constructions of gender, desire, citizenship and nation.
Screenings will include:
escrito, 2007, 2 min: poetically gestures to the
contradictions of what it means to be a queer immigrant in the U.S.
entre nos, 2012: queer migrants survivors of
violence speak amongst themselves ("entre nos") about what being
undocumented in the U.S. means and the devastating
impact of law enforcement and immigration enforcement collaboration.
un/binding desires, 2011: develops the idea of “marginal
desires” and displays images of bondage as an expression of queer difference.
These images accompany the audio based conversations with queer migrants and
queers who explore their parents’ histories of migration while speaking about
their own desires. By destabilizing the accessibility of U.S. history of
migration through making a space for these marginal desires and literally
re-reading such history, this piece invites you to question the ways in which
migration and desire are usually represented
fragments of migration installation, 2008: This piece interrogates the institution
of asylum in the U.S. based on sexual identity and gender identity.
intimate margins installation, 2007: By interweaving intimate conversations among
undocumented lesbians, we reclaim political spaces in the margins.
work in progress: fragments of conversations with a queer migrant as she journeys back
"home" horizontally juxtaposed with the words of a queer young person
of color speaking about homelessness, criminalization and sex work.