Alejandro Santiago
Alejandro Santiago
Mother of the Migrants
ceramic
52” (133cm)
circa 2000
Images
Overview
In the early 2000’s Alejandro Santiago spent a decade creating 2,501 ceramic sculptures with a team of assistants in Oaxaca, Mexico. The project was based on migration from Mexico to the United States.
To begin the project, Santiago first made seven prototypes. These initial prototypes were very different from the later ones that constituted the 2,501 Migrantes project, which were generally darker and higher fired.
The first seven (which this is one), were created with a low firing process, and were created entirely by the hand of Alejandro Santiago himself, without the assistance of his team.
As a result of the firing process Santiago used in creating these initial sculptures, the colors turned out different than the thousands of others he created later on. This one (and the other prototypes) have more white and earthy brown colors, while the faces have shades of dark black mixed in as well.
As this particular piece was the first one Santiago ever created, he called it the "Mother of the Migrants".
View more work by Alejandro Santiago.