This exhibition visualizes the migrating people in the U.S.-Mexico debate who are representative of ever-changing and increasing migration and migration patterns. The aim of the exhibition and its accompanying programming is to help clarify the complex issues surrounding migration, and foster knowledge and understanding that can affect public opinion and public policy toward migrants and migrant communities.

Bound to El Norte follows some of the thousands of Central Americans who annually attempt the harrowing and illegal 1,500-mile journey through the length of Mexico on the tops of freight trains. Nearly all encounter hunger, fatigue, physical danger, and human cruelty. Among the migrants are children as young as 12, traveling alone, trying to unify with parents – usually mothers – who left them behind to work in the U.S. For these children, the dream of reuniting with their parents becomes as a quest for the Holy Grail.

Between Two Worlds illustrates the chaos and danger at the San Diego/Tijuana, Mexico border in thirty black and white photographs taken from 1983 – 1993. More undocumented immigrants cross in this area than any other international border and in reality, the border conditions extend roughly 70 miles north, into San Diego’s North County. Next door to suburban neighborhoods, thousands of Mexican men, boys, and entire families, live in camps without running water or electricity, in hand-made shacks. The camps spring up where farm workers can walk to vegetable and flower fields, and day laborers can work nearby in construction or home maintenance. In an uneasy political situation, often the same communities that depend on the pool of cheap labor protest its existence in their midst.

The Bartletti presentation is accompanied by the work of Arizona artists that interpret the immigration issue through multimedia sculpture, paintings, film and photographs. The Arizona Daily Star offers an area where participants can share their own immigration story.