![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Ceremonia_Video-Still_01.jpg\")
A screenshot from \u201cCeremonia En Esta Tierra Sagrada,\u201d 2023. Single channel video.<\/p>\nWhen Elizabeth Pineda was in the midst of her MFA program in photography at Arizona State University, she began thinking about how to expand a project beyond her own experience because, she says, \u201cthe immigrant story is many people\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her research took her to the migrant death maps compiled by Humane Borders. Late one night, \u201caround 2, 3 in the morning,\u201d while trying to download the latest version of the map as reference, she inadvertently got the HTML version, which instead of charting red dots on a map of Arizona\u2019s border and migrant travel corridors, listed every recorded migrant death with coordinates, date of discovery, condition of remains at time of discovery, presumed cause of death, and name. In the many cases for which a name could not be determined, the entry is marked \u201csin nombre.\u201d This record of deaths stretches on for many hundreds of lines.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe map was transformed with the truth of what it holds,\u201d Pineda says. \u201cThose little red dots on the map were no longer dots. They were human beings who perished in the desert. I sat there and wept at the sight.\u201d<\/p>\n
That encounter with the list became the basis for Pineda\u2019s work \u201cReverencia: Arizona Migrant Death Mapping,\u201d a collection of long silk scrolls with that document\u2019s text printed on them, now on display at the Phoenix Art Museum as part of Pineda\u2019s exhibit for having won one of two 2024 Sally and Richard Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards.\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really intense,\u201d Pineda says of the application for the award. She and her husband were in El Paso, Texas, for the Border Biennial at the El Paso Museum of Arts. Pineda was showing an earlier, smaller iteration of the project with three silks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to go to Juarez,\u201d Pineda recalls of that weekend. \u201cI wanted to go photograph the border. I had all these ideas because I was going to be in such proximity to a different part of the border. Instead, I spent that whole two, three days working on nothing but the application.\u201d<\/p>\n
After winning the award, when it came time to set up the pieces in the exhibit space, Pineda worked with the installation team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI brought the silks in rolled in a literal scroll,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd because they have a raw edge, they tend to start to unravel. I had to have scissors on hand to trim when necessary. Otherwise, if it catches, it can just start snagging all the way up.\u201d Visitors to the exhibit are likely to notice that the silks are long enough that some of the material forms little mounds on the floor. \u201cThat mounding, that collapse is really important for me as an analogy of the body collapsing,\u201d Pineda says.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Across from the silks is a small desk made from the slender branches of a fallen palo verde tree and a video screen playing a 12-minute video of selections from a day-long ceremony Pineda performed in the Ironwood Forest National Monument.<\/p>\n
In \u201cCeremonia en Esta Tierra Sagrada (Ceremony on This Sacred Life),\u201d Pineda, with a blue silk cloak 20 yards long draped across her shoulders, calls out the names of migrants who died crossing the desert and types their names on handmade corn-husk paper. She calls and types \u201csin nombre\u201d for the many people whose names are not known.<\/p>\n
A screenshot from \u201cCeremonia En Esta Tierra Sagrada,\u201d 2023. Single channel video.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Elizabeth Pineda<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThis ceremony has nothing to do with myself,\u201d Pineda says. \u201cIt\u2019s about honoring those whose names I\u2019m calling, or those whose names I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m trying to give voice to them.\u201d\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n She made the cloak blue with a photosensitive solution similar to that used for developing photographs. By leaving the cloak out in the desert sun for long periods with rocks, plants and other natural objects on top, she developed the cloak to a bright blue with faint traces of where the objects had been placed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe desert landscape is visible,\u201d Pineda says of the cloak. \u201cYou can see hints of the plants that were in the desert when I made it.\u201d Blue was Pineda\u2019s color of choice because of its association with grief and sadness, and she chose this photosensitive method for its metaphorical resonance.<\/p>\n \u201cExposure to the sun is what makes these images appear,\u201d she says of the process. \u201cThen you need to wash them in water. And these two elements are at odds with what happens to these people. Exposure is oftentimes what takes them because they don\u2019t have water.\u201d<\/p>\n Pineda performed the ceremony over the course of many visits to Ironwood Forest National Monument, at different times of day, so that the video chronicles a recitation of names as well as the day\u2019s journey into night, with the camera farther and farther from her as the daylight wanes.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n To the right of the wall displaying \u201cReverencia\u201d hangs \u201cUn Libro de Familia, 02: A Rewriting of the Migrant Death Mapping Document,\u201d a selection of the handmade cornhusk papers on which are typed names of migrants who died trying to cross the harsh desert landscape between the border and the Phoenix area.<\/p>\n \u201cCorn is a gift,\u201d Pineda says of the material she chose for her papermaking. \u201cCorn is one of the three sisters. Traditionally in Mexico, the three sisters that feed and nourish are corn, squash and beans. It\u2019s a very primal thing that gives sustenance and is a gift from Mother Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n Pineda\u2019s mother was from Oaxaca, Mexico, where \u201ccorn is regarded as a gift from the gods.\u201d She relates that in Mexico there is a saying that without corn, there is no country. \u201cI also think about the political ramifications of corn. When NAFTA happened, it took away from farmers. It took away from them being able to grow their crops, which caused a lot of the migration.\u201d<\/p>\n Making paper from corn husks is laborious. \u201cThere were 10 different sessions of papermaking,\u201d Pineda recalls. \u201cI would start on a Thursday and end on a Monday.\u201d There would be two days of cutting, followed by a day of soaking, a day of cooking and then a day of pulling sheets one by one. \u201cI would start at 8 in the morning and finish at 3 or 4 in the morning the following day.\u201d The sheets then needed a few days to dry.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n That laboriousness is important to Pineda\u2019s conception of the project.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to honor, through the material and my labor, their labor,\u201d she says. \u201cOftentimes when these people are migrating, the only thing they know that they\u2019re going to do is work, and they have a strong work ethic. And so, through my own labor, I want to honor that work ethic that never saw itself to fruition, that never got to experience the dream of doing that.\u201d Because Pineda did all this work at home, with tools available to her (and not industrial machinery used for paper one might buy for a printer), irregularities and tears occur in the sheets. \u201cSo I began mending a lot of paper to save the sheets. And I began thinking about the disregard of the people.\u201d She decided that she wanted the tiny tears and irregularities and to mend and recover what otherwise would have been deemed unworthy and discarded, again with attention to metaphorical resonance for the lives and deaths of the migrants whose names the project records.<\/p>\n \n The last piece making up the exhibit is \u201cLa Luz del Desierto (Light of the Desert),\u201d a collection of lumen prints made with plants native to the Sonoran and Chihuahan Deserts: mesquite, Arizona fescue, palo verde, rama blanca, ironwood, gobernadora, and giant sacaton. Pineda placed pieces of these plants on photosensitive paper that she left out in the sun for one to weeks, whereas the typical exposure time for prints of this kind is several hours to a day. \u201cI really wanted to push the process to see what I would get,\u201d she says of long exposure periods, which are meant to correspond to the time it might take a migrant to traverse the border region\u2019s desert corridors. For most photography, the paper is at some point treated with a fixer solution to halt its chemical reaction to light and stop the image from changing further (fix it). Pineda, though, opted not to fix the image, so the plants leave \u201cmarks that are going to change, impressions that will fade\u201d as the prints\u2019 chemistry continues to react to further light exposure. As with the blue cloak, the photosynthetic exposure of art materials corresponds to the environmental exposure that migrants face in these areas-a kind of exposure that can often be fatal. And like the remains of those who perish, the lumen prints temporarily preserve what Pineda describes as an \u201caura,\u201d though this fades, leaving the desert landscape, simultaneously a \u201charsh environment\u201d and \u201cplace of beauty,\u201d as a witness that has \u201ctaken in all that pain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Elizabeth Pineda was in the midst of her MFA program in photography at Arizona State University, she…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":331619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,8160,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-331618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-museums","12":"tag-phoenix","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115435045819452810","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/00_Self-portrait-image-courtsey-of-the-Artist.jpg\")
A self-portrait of artist Elizabeth Pineda.<\/p>\n