Brayan Enriquez: Like Hills Made of Sand
May 29 – August 23, 2025
“Tardaste en venir”, dijo su tío—un saludo y una acusación. Hacía más de quince años que no se veían.
Para esta nueva exposición, Brayan Enríquez viajó a México por primera vez para visitar a su extensa familia, a muchos de los cuales no había conocido debido a las restricciones de viaje o no había visto desde su deportación de Estados Unidos hace más de una década. Durante su estancia en Acapulco, México, Enríquez utilizó la creación de imágenes para introducirse tanto a su familia como al paisaje. Los íntimos retratos resultantes se entremezclan con objetos del archivo familiar, extrayendo experiencias vividas a lo largo de generaciones y estados-nación para ilustrar los efectos invisibles de las políticas de inmigración estadounidenses.
El primer encuentro es cálido, con rasgos familiares reorganizados en alguien nuevo. ¿Cuál es el punto de encuentro entre lo familiar y lo insólito, entre lo extraño y lo familiar? Las imágenes recortadas y fragmentadas de Enríquez crean una narrativa que habita en las fronteras, compartiendo un conocimiento familiar redactado desde la memoria fuera de alcance.
“You were late,” said his uncle—a greeting and an accusation. They hadn’t seen each other in over fifteen years.
For this new body of work, Brayan Enriquez traveled to Mexico for the first time to visit his extended family, many of whom he had never met due to travel restrictions or had not seen since their deportation from the U.S. over a decade ago. Throughout his time in Acapulco, Mexico, Enriquez used image-making to introduce himself to both his family and the landscape. The resulting intimate portraits are interspersed with artifacts from his family’s archive, mining lived experiences spanning generations and nation-states to image the invisible effects of U.S. immigration policies.
The first meeting is warm, with familiar features rearranged on someone new. What is the meeting ground between kin and uncanny, neither strange nor familiar? Enriquez’s cropped and fragmented images create a narrative that dwells in the borders, sharing a family knowledge drafted from memory out of reach.
Brayan Enriquez (b. 2000) is a first-generation Mexican-American artist based in Atlanta, GA. His work focuses on his family and their past as undocumented immigrants to discuss the migrant experience in the United States. Enriquez earned a BFA in Photography from the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University. He’s a recipient of Atlanta Center for Photography’s 2025 Emerging Artist Fellowship and Aperture and Google’s 2024 Creator Labs Photo Fund. His work has been featured in ArtsATL, The New York Times, and LENSCRATCH, and he was included on a panel at the inaugural Atlanta Art Fair.
