New YDS exhibit showcases art of migrant children

In 2014, Professor Gregory L. Cuéllar of Austin Seminary and his wife, Nohemi, were deeply disturbed by news reports of rising numbers of migrant children, many unaccompanied, being detained in cages at the nearby Texas/Mexico border. 

“That visual horrified us as people of faith who believe that humans are deserving of dignity,” says Cuéllar, Full Professor in Hebrew Bible and the Ruth A. Anderson Professor of Biblical Studies at Austin. “We wanted to engage in something that could counter this dehumanizing treatment of asylum seekers and children.”

The two led a group of volunteers to the Sacred Heart Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, where asylum seekers, refugees, and migrant families received showers, meals, resource referrals, humanitarian supplies, and other assistance before they moved on to await their immigration court cases. 

The Cuéllars brought paper and art supplies and asked children at the center if they wanted to draw. Team members were profoundly touched by the resulting art. Over the years, they returned to that center and others, and eventually, they collected a wealth of drawings. “We thought, ‘How can we share this gift?’ And so, the idea of a mobile exhibit emerged,” Cuéllar recalls.

The mobile exhibit, “Arte de Lágrimas” or Art of Tears, was installed at Yale Divinity School in the relocated Sarah Smith Gallery near Latourette in early September. It will remain there until early November. 

It was Yii-Jan Lin, Associate Professor of New Testament at YDS, who initially proposed that the Divinity School host Arte de Lágrimas.

“I couldn’t think of a more immediately relevant exhibit for the Divinity School,” Lin says. “There’s so much talk about immigration in the abstract. This exhibit is important because it highlights the reality behind the abstract political discourse and terminology that we’re faced with every day in the news, and it gives an individual-focused human dimension to it.”

Visual reminders

The Arte de Lágrimas pieces are matted simply and displayed on cage-like wire lattices, a visual reminder of the way many children were detained. Next to each drawing is a short description of the artist, including their age and circumstances. The pieces represent perhaps the youngest artists to have their art exhibited for the Yale community.

Cuéllar says their team was careful not to direct the children about what to draw or to trigger any traumas they had experienced. The volunteers would simply urge the children to draw something they saw on their journey to the U.S. or something about the homes they had left behind.

“They were excited about someone being interested in them and just being kind to them, which was a contrast from what they had experienced along the journey,” Cuéllar says. “It was very satisfying to be able to offer the children a spirit of welcome, so that they didn’t feel that they were seen as criminals but rather were seen as humans.”

On their first trip, Nohemi Cuéllar interacted with a quiet four-year-old from El Salvador. She asked the girl to draw something she missed from her home. The girl drew a circle with faint lines coming down. “I couldn’t really make it out,” Cuéllar recalls, “so I asked her, ‘What’s this?’ She replied, ‘This is my grandma, and these are her tears,’ “I was so moved.” That drawing is part of the YDS exhibit.

In addition to tears, the exhibit showcases moments of joy and hope. Lin was particularly taken with a picture by a four-year-old Haitian girl, Princess, who proudly drew her self-portrait with gigantic feet. ““The idea that she walks on these big feet shows a sense of strength and determination and really just happiness that I was delighted to find among the pictures,” Lin says.

For Professor Cuéllar, one of the most meaningful pieces in the YDS exhibit was drawn by seven-year-old Dayana, who depicted her journey from Guatemala. Dayana drew the Rio Grande River and the makeshift boat that she, her mother, and her little brother traveled in. When Cuéllar asked if anyone else traveled with them, Dayana removed the rosary from around her neck, traced the cross, and told him that Jesus was with them. “It was an act of faith that God was protecting them,” he says. “It was very powerful.”

The drawings in the exhibit were all gifts from the children, something that was important to Cuéllar given his previous academic work on how artifacts at the British Museum had been taken from people under colonization. “We didn’t want to deny the children that agency of being able to gift something to us, but then what do you do with these precious art pieces?” he says. “This has been an organic project that continues to move forward. Just letting those stories speak for themselves became a very powerful tool for raising awareness.”

A visceral disruption

Arte de Lágrimas has been displayed at churches and universities across the country, often as part of public forums about immigration justice. In early October, the Cuéllars are bringing some of the children’s drawings to an international academic conference in Rome about migration. YDS is the eighth theological school, and the first Ivy League institution, to host the exhibit.

Cuéllar says the exhibit is intended to “disrupt the spaces where it is housed,” especially when those spaces typically focus on elite people with influence and economic means. “People think, ‘Oh, this is a cute gesture to offer space to children’s drawings.’ But then, when they read closer and start to engage the art, they realize, ‘Oh, these are asylum-seeking children talking about their migration.’ And all these various layers begin to unfold.”

Cuéllar says some people are even moved to tears by the children’s simple expressions of faith. “There is a deep sense of spiritual offering that happens with these exhibits, and it’s an amazing mystical spiritual phenomenon that happens. It transforms mundane space into these mini altars,” he says.

Cuéllar hopes people who view the exhibit will also be led to do some soul-searching about their own views and actions. “We know that the situation of asylum seekers is much more complex than just crossing a border, that there are economic, climate, political, and social issues involved,” he says. “How have we contributed to the negative realities that many of these children face?”

Lin’s hope is that the exhibit will have a lasting impact on the YDS community. “We are an institution of learning and academics, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we also need to remember that real people are going through what we study,” she says. “This is a moment not of objective study, but rather of emotional connection that affects us in a very visceral way.”

Given the current political climate, Cuéllar says he is especially pleased that YDS has chosen to host this exhibit. “We are in an era where hearing these stories from the asylum seekers themselves is going to be more and more difficult. We are fortunate that we have been able to capture these stories and have them available for a time such as this,” he says.

“With this project, we are committed to sharing the migration stories of vulnerable and marginalized people in the very places where leaders are formed,” Cuéllar adds. “Our hope is that these leaders will carry what they hear in these stories—the questions they provoke, the truths they reveal—into their ministries and vocations, so that hearts may be changed and, in time, policies transformed.”

Kim Lawton is an award-winning reporter, producer, and writer who has worked in broadcast, print and online media. For nearly 20 years, Lawton was Managing Editor and Correspondent for the highly acclaimed national public television program “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”