Image by César Maxit
Migration Now! was a 2012 print portfolio co-produced by Justseeds and CultureStrike (CultureStrike is now the Center for Cultural Power) which explored the social, cultural, and emotional facets of immigration.
César Maxit was born in Argentina at the start of the Dirty War. His family fled the conflict to Texas where he eventually studied and practiced architecture. Maxit has lived in Washington, D.C. since 2004 where he works with local groups in the District and with national environmental and human rights organizations on their messaging and visual outreach materials. Maxit is also a direct actions trainer with the Ruckus Society on strategic arts work with indigenous, migrant, and other impacted communities.
Maxit’s piece rejects the word “alien” to mean human migrant, instead presenting a vision of a planet with no borders that guarantees freedom of movement for all. The artist’s image was inspired by his Culture Strike residency at the Blue Mountain Center where writer and organizer Walidah Imarisha led Maxit and other artists in a visionary fiction exercise. Maxit imagined a world where extraterrestrials had made contact with Earth, so bilingual public service announcements extended their “welcome” to all humans and aliens. The violation of human rights as experienced in migrant communities is an issue Maxit attempts to tackle with humor and hope.
This page is currently a placeholder while we to track down the original high-res files of the images from this portfolio (06/2020)
