The Florence Project is the largest provider of free legal and social services to detained immigrants in Arizona. It serves thousands of adults and children, both those who are threatened with deportation and those seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In their project Pathway to Freedom: Florence Project Client Stories, people assisted by FIRRP share their migration narratives, reflecting on the hardships that led them to flee their countries, the challenges they endured in the U.S. immigration system, and their hopes and dreams for the future.

Through written profiles, photography, and illustrations, the Florence Project presents its clients’ stories to honor their resilience while also exposing hard truths about injustices endured by immigrants seeking refuge in the U.S.

Chavalxs is a collaborative community-based artistic project that focuses on creating spaces of reflection through photography to confront and reconstruct narratives and therefore the realities of young people from rural areas near the border between Mexico and the U.S. Through a multidisciplinary process using audiovisual media, archives, objects, performative and collaborative strategies, Alejandra’s work explores the intersections between territory, body, representation and identity. Her intention is to turn memory into a living archive that amplifies our voice through time and helps resist the realities of late capitalism. Chavalxs was on exhibition at Centro Cultural Azul Arena in Ciudad Juárez.

Alejandra Aragón was part of the Photography Seminar of the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City in 2017 and received the Mexican FONCA young creators grant in 2018. She was a member of the Joop Swart Master Class 2020 and nominated for the Oskar Barnack award in 2021. Aragón was awarded the Border Narrative Change Grant by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures in 2021. She was the winner of the first Latin American award from the Sony World Photography Awards in 2022. That same year she entered the National System of Creators of Mexico.

Border Arts Corridor is a community-centered non-profit that sees the border between Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, as an opportunity to create art that transcends boundaries and unites communities. BAC drives forward social justice policies, public art, and local artists who shine a light on the communities in which they live. As part of their border narrative change work, BAC created a fellowship program, investing in six emerging artists whose art, life and histories are woven between the US and Mexico. BAC is continuously striving to support creatives whose stories and art practices shift border narratives.

Monumental Interventions, is a video installation that brings monuments to life using facial motion capture and interviews to uncover the underpinnings of militarism within the border region of San Diego. In February 2023 the piece was exhibited at the San Diego International Airport and was soon after censored for complaints on the work’s subject matter.

Evan Apodaca is a third-generation Chicano digital media artist best known for Que Lejos Estoy, a short-animated documentary film about his family which streamed nationally on PBS in 2016. Apodaca’s work in experimental non-fiction and animation explores culture, identity and political activism in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. His video work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the New Americans Museum, Best Practice Gallery, the Chicano International Film Festival (Los Angeles), the Tijuana Film & Food Festival and the San Diego Latino Film Festival. He was a 2019 San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst fellow and was a recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture’s Border Narrative Change Grant in 2021.

RGISC’s mission is to preserve and protect the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed and environment through awareness, advocacy, research, education, stewardship and bi-national collaboration for the benefit of present and future generations.

This project has changed the border narrative by cultivating greater understanding of cultural organizing toward climate environmental and racial justice while deepening organizing work occurring in Laredo. Both front-line organizations in the area, the RGISC and the No Border Wall Laredo Coalition (NBWC), have collaborated to raise awareness of shared culture and environmental resources through workshops, leadership building, public art projects and creative actions. This project has strengthened connections with allies across the border through monthly gatherings, training sessions, network building and coordinated actions.

Dr. Huizar-Hernández is Associate Professor, School of International Letters and Cultures. Her teaching and research focus on the literatures and cultures of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and investigate the ways that stories—past, present, and future—shape our ability to cultivate just and inclusive communities within the borderlands. Her research focuses on the ways literature, film, and other forms of expressive culture have consolidated or challenged myths about Arizona, the West, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.