Crossing Lines/Lineas que Cruzamos

The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Main Gallery is thrilled to present Crossing Lines/Lineas que Cruzamos, a two-person exhibition featuring the works of Mexican-born artists, Arleene Correa Valencia and Georgina Reskala. 

To leave is to die a little.  
To arrive is never to arrive.   
Partir es morir un poco 
Llegar nunca es llegar. 

-  migrant prayer 

Crossing Lines/Lineas que Cruzamos is curated by photographer, curator, and educator Ann Jastrab, and features the work of Georgina Reskala and Arleene Correa Valencia, both graduates of the California College of the Arts, who both live and work in California, and who both have an immigration story to share. 

“Both Arleene Correa Valencia and Georgina Reskala want to retell erased history, to have another look,” states exhibition curator Ann Jastrab. “Women of color historically haven’t been given a chance to tell their stories. The title, Crossing Lines, speaks not just of their textile work (sewing), but of crossing physical, psychological, cultural, moral borders and boundaries.”  

Correa Valencia and Reskala have more in common than their place of origin and where they both nurtured their artistic talents. Their work has a relationship to grief, community, endurance, immigration, flight, displacement, separation and mortality. There is meaningful tension in their works, both Correa Valencia’s large, embroidered textiles and Reskala’s small silver prints and woven (and unwoven) pieces that have been obsessively reworked. There is also a pointed look at absence and invisibility, and in particular, absence made visible.  

Arleene Correa Valencia’s textile works draw heavily from her upbringing and her migration to the United States. Her work explores her identity as a registered “illegal alien” through a thoughtful play portraiture. Figures are both concealed and exposed in her work, examining how communities are often rendered visible and invisible based on their lack of documentation, skin color, and ethnicity. Through her large-scale works, Correa Valencia seeks to celebrate and validate her community’s resilience and strength. 

Georgina Reskala seeks to stop transient moments, creating a record of what slips away from history. Her photography and textile-based work involves folds, layers, cuts, and transformation to reveal hidden images and through that investigates how stories get reshaped and how history is written. Reskala’s work explores the process of separation that many immigrants go through: a slow process of letting go of roots and language in exchange for belonging or safety. Figures shift, disappear, and reappear in her work, evoking the changing relationship between an individual and their cultural roots.  

Opening Public Reception Details 
Friday, March 3, 6 – 8 p.m.  
Remarks at 6:30 p.m.
SFAC Main Gallery, War Memorial Veterans Building 
401 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 126, San Francisco, CA 94102 
Free and open to the public 

Image credit: (Left) Georgina Reskala, Untitled #202320, 2023 (detail). (Right) Arleene Correa Valencia, Querido Hijo, 1991 / Dear Son, 1991, 2020.