Kisha Bari
The lives of seven undocumented immigrants who died of COVID-19 are at the center of activist-artist Paola Mendoza s new art installation, Immigrants Are Essential, which takes its name from a campaign spearheaded by the National Immigration Law Center and Resilience Force.
The faces of Mario Hernandez Enríquez, Fedelina Lugasan, Yimel Alvarado, Juan Ramos, Guadalupe Aguilar Sánchez, Ofelia Tapia Alonso, and Moisés Hernández Delgado are digitally rendered in colorful, larger-than-life portraits plastered onto an empty storefront in New York City s neighborhood of SoHo. They represent just some of the tens of thousands of undocumented people whose lives were lost to the deadly virus in the past year.