Last year around this time I was cheerfully writing about the great upcoming art exhibitions, dance concerts and plays scheduled for the spring: paintings at the UA’s Joseph Gross gallery by a talented young Liberian refugee; a modern dance in Reid Park by the up-and-coming Hawkinsdance troupe; and an Irish play by acclaimed playwright Martin McDonagh at the Rogue Theatre.
I didn’t see any of them. They were all shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.
Things are getting better now, we hope. The vaccine has arrived and this miracle drug just may bring us back to life eventually.
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Longtime arts writer Margaret Regan returns to our pages this week with a look at Etherton Gallery s latest show, El Sueño, an exhibit of photographs by Tom Kiefer. An Ajo resident, Kiefer worked as a janitor at a Border Patrol station and collected migrant belongings that had been tossed in the trash by agents. The objects formed the basis of Kiefer s work in El Sueño, a haunting show that also includes work by Alejandro Cartigena and a selection of Mexican folk retablos. Regan will also moderate a virtual talk with Kiefer, author Francisco Cantú, migrant rights advocate Dora Rodriquez and poet and author Jose Javier Zamora on Saturday night. See her story for details about how you can tune in.
When artist Tom Kiefer first started working as a part-time janitor at the Border Patrol station in Ajo back in 2003, he was shocked by the agency s practice of throwing out perfectly good canned foods they took away from captured migrants. The boss, he says, told the agents they were not to waste time worrying about food. They were told that their job was to arrest people and bring them in. Period. I thought it showed a callous disregard for people. I was disgusted. Kiefer had moved to Ajo after 9/11 from L.A., where he had been working as a graphic designer and antiques dealer. He wanted to concentrate on his photography, and with Ajo s low cost of living, he was able to buy a house. And the job with Border Patrol was one of the best-paying gigs in town.
An Exhibition in Tucson Looks at the Things We Leave Behind
Photographers Tom Kiefer and Alejandro Cartagena portray unseen lives, migrant journeys, and the disparity between reality and myth.
Reviews - December 22, 2020
Where one artist collects, another deliberately erases and alters. On Halloween in downtown Tucson, Arizona, Etherton Gallery’s opening of
El Sueño, an exhibition of Tom Kiefer’s photographs of migrants’ seized belongings and Alejandro Cartagena’s reconfigured found prints, was extended for seven hours ten people at a time, maximum, a COVID-era measure that prompted small waves of drifting viewers. The exhibition takes its title from a larger presentation of Kiefer’s work earlier this year at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles (