Body: In Diaspora

Body: In Diaspora is a project that asks the questions of everyday living: What is your favorite food? Where were you born?
What do you miss from home? What is it like for you to be here? Where do you live now? Do you like it? What happened?

An objective of the project is to access peoples' diverse histories and give a voice to their experiences and insights.
The dialogues focused on personal stories and the particulars of each person’s experience of creating a new life in a new country.

Mosquera listened intently to their stories, taught drawing and English as a second language, went to soccer games,
took shopping trips and shared meals with participants. Through these and many other meaningful personal encounters,
she gathered the raw material used to create the various artistic components of the exhibition.

The artwork presented as an installation of large-scale artist book-prints in various configurations, photographic images, inkjet prints, text and a digital movie. Though it is a gathering of information, her intention is not one of documentation but one of presenting their beauty through diverse art forms. Body: In Diaspora is a visual log of Mosquera's interaction with Holocaust survivors, Somali and Russian refugees. Each image was chosen to express the beauty and importance of every interaction with each individual as she listened and lived with their story.