Arleene Correa Valencia, “El Árbol / The Tree,” 2024, textiles, acrylic, and thread on Amate paper made by Jose Daniel Santos de la Puerta, 60 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Photograph by Adrian Osnaya.

In 2007, I learned that a former writing student of mine was actually a visual arts major. I learned this when Karen Sorenson unexpectedly produced the most remarkable work of art that anyone, student or faculty, would exhibit in my decade at Snow College. While No One is Watching powerfully expressed the feelings, probably common to many of her classmates, of loneliness and uncertainty that one student felt on finding herself suspended between childhood and maturity, security and independence, her family and her future (see my review here). It took the form of three very large drawings, self-portraits cut into silhouettes of her figure that she clothed in garments made from her own childhood clothing, which in conversation she identified as property she wanted both to keep and be rid of. The personal content of a work of art could hardly be better accounted for: preserved forever, but closed off and formally contained.

What brought this three-part image of her into the present was the way she was shown wadding up pieces of paper and dropping them into three wastebaskets, one under each of the three versions of herself. It wasn’t revealed whether these were drawings or writings, assigned or personal work, but the way they progressively spilled over the rim of their container suggested the doubt, the sense of futility, that was expressed so well in the faces and postures of her images. We knew that we were not likely to soon see another such powerful melding of traditional and experimental forms: the self-image on paper that could have been made anytime in art history in a variety of media, but that went on to break through past rules of order and emerge into a three-dimensional trio of convention-shattering images that flew off the wall into the room where we stood, struck dumb by her eloquence.

Arleene Correa Valencia, “La Flor de Cempasúchil / The Marigold Flower,” 2024, textiles, acrylic, and thread on Amate paper made by Jose Daniel Santos de la Puerta, 48 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Photograph by Adrian Osnaya.

I had reason to vividly recall While No One is Watching this past week, when Salt 16 presented Arleene Correa Valencia at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA). Correa Valencia was born in Michoacán, a Mexican state renowned for its extensive production of traditional crafts, including the municipality of Patzcuaro, which surrounds a large, productive lake and includes entire towns that are each identified with a single craft, such as copper vessels, wooden furniture and ritual costumes including elaborate masks. Sadly, this region became known in the United States primarily for its high quality marijuana, which almost certainly contributed to the social unrest that forced Correa Valencia’s family to flee when the future artist was three years old. They settled in Napa Valley, the trademark agricultural locale in California. While the family may have been safe, her father was required to move about in search of seasonal work. In her artist statement, she mentions a sense of grief over this loss of her father’s steady company at that time.

As for the larger picture, for decades travel back and forth across the US/Mexico border for work had been a staple of Mexican life. But in more recent times, growing hostility in the US towards transients had made the journey perilous. Correa Valencia clearly understands the danger viscerally, as evidenced by her painting title “La Bestia”—“The Beast,” which depicts two men of different ages approaching an enormous rail car, the sign between them reading “CUIDADO CON EL TREN”—or “be careful with the train.” Of course the massive, unresponsive machine, which still kills and maims untold numbers of riders who employ it in ways it was never designed for, is only half the story. There are also the railroad workers, police, and even soldiers who patrol the railroad, pretty much with impunity for how they treat violators, who are caught not in one, but two hostile elements .

The story of migration told here continues with “The Guard,” the title of which loses some of its meaning in translation. “La Guardia” conflates guard dogs, seen here on the roof of an unidentified building, with official enforcement. Three agricultural images follow, the third including festive dress and decorative paper cutouts that exemplify Ranchero life. The series climaxes with “El Regreso”—“The Return,” which is both the wish of those trapped on the wrong side of the border by harsh circumstances and the final chapter of life itself. The grave of one left behind becomes a goal, the pilgrimage site and the reward for the fortunate son who is able to find a way home.

Arleene Correa Valencia, “La Guardia / The Guard,” 2024, textiles, acrylic, and thread on Amate paper made by Jose Daniel Santos de la Puerta, 60 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Photograph by Adrian Osnaya.

It’s apparent that Arleene Correa Valencia chose a different approach to her project than Karen Sorenson did hers. Correa Valencia undertook to open up the story, using found-but-appropriate textiles, eliminating individual references, and including the settings of her vignettes. She also filled in the silhouettes of her figures with reflective fabric that, while it doesn’t permit seeing one’s own reflection in her faces, does further advance the work of uniting the art with the space it sits on the edge of. At the opening, distinguished local photographer Ed Bateman shared a flash photo of one of the works, an image that showed how the reflective material might bring the image to life. The gallery where UMFA shows such visiting exhibitions has no windows or source of natural light, and it seemed possible that were it shown in the presence of such, the art might look very different.

Two artists, working decades and a thousand miles apart, came up with remarkably parallel ways of telling their personal stories. It’s worth noting that neither approach seems any more or less universal. Yet there are discreet differences in point of view, which every artist must grapple with in her own works of art: among them, the choice whether to look in, or to look out.

Arleene Correa Valencia, “El Regreso / The Return,” 2024, textiles, acrylic, and thread on Amate paper made by Jose Daniel Santos de la Puerta, 48 x 60 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Photograph by Adrian Osnaya.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.