Lorena Molina
La Tierra Recuerda (The Land Remembers), 2024
Vinyl. Original work, chromogenic print
Commission, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University
On View August 29th, 2024-July 31, 2025
“A visual artist and educator, Lorena Molina uses photography, video, performance, and installation art to explore questions of identity, intimacy, and pain in the context of war, immigration, exploitation of labor, and social inequities. The artist faced violence and displacement herself when the civil war—fought between the government and leftist guerillas from 1979 to 1992 in El Salvador—forced her family to settle in the United States. La Tierra Recuerda depicts the lava fields in El Playon, a site where the last eruption of the San Salvador volcano happened. That area was used by the paramilitary death squads during the civil war as a place to abandon the bodies of civilians. Molina honors the dead by highlighting their memory and encouraging viewers to reflect on traumatic events of the past and how they continue to affect future generations and the land we inhabit”. -Frauke V. Josenhans, Ph.D.
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