Quick Hit: ‘Unearthed: Desenterrado’ Artist Adriana Corral spent two days creating a site-specific wall drawing in W&L's Staniar Gallery to accompany her exhibition. Here's a look at that process.
Washington and Lee’s Staniar Gallery displayed “Unearthed: Desenterrado,” an exhibition of recent works by Texas-based artist Adriana Corral, from April 22–May 24. The exhibit was based on Corral’s research on the Bracero Program, a government-sponsored worker program that brought millions of Mexican manual laborers (braceros) and farm workers to the United States in the early-and mid-20th century.
Along with the exhibition in Staniar, Corral spent two days creating a site-specific wall drawing for the installation at W&L. The drawing consisted of blueprints of the Rio Vista Farm, which was used as a processing center for the Bracero-Mexican guest worker program and was known for its inhospitable conditions. The drawing was created using one-of-a-kind pigment sticks that Corral made with soil gathered from the farm itself.
In her socially engaged practice, Corral investigates universal themes of loss, human rights violations, concealment and memory. Her research-based practice and process draws from the fields of anthropology, journalism, gender studies and human rights legal studies.
Staniar Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, in Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please call 540-458-8861.
The project was funded in part by a grant from Virginia Humanities.
