Lorena Molina

For the return, It’s part of the Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue exhibition curated by Laura Augusta currently on view at the Rubin Center until April 12, 2025.

After the Rubin center, the exhibition will travel to the Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX), the Tarble Arts Center (Charleston, IL), and the College of Wooster Art Museum (Wooster, OH) through 2026.

For the installation, I reimagined the corn stalks from the corn maze from “At What Cost? Part II. At the center of the installation, there’s a pile of gold candy that’s scripted “For the return” that visitors can take with them. The candy is surrounded by text that reads, “Cuando el sueño es la semilla, y la cosecha es el regreso” “When the dream is the seed and the harvest is the return”

I created this site for people that also dream for the return to their homeland like me. My dream for the return is always connected to the land, to the harvest, it is connected to the people, to a version of me that I never got to know.

During my residency at the Rubin Center, I collaborated with UTEP professor, Sandra Paola López and her students in her Performance Activism class. In this collaboration, we explored themes of homeland, migration, and return through Cumbia dance. The project culminated in Danzas del Retorno, a participatory performance set within the installation. Together we discussed Cumbia’s history globally and personally and we choreographed the final performance. We used dance as a way to honor resistance, bodily agency and dance as a form to return.