El Museo del Barrio, La Trienal, 2024-25, New York City, NY.
Participatory projects lie at the heart of Mark Menjívar‘s practice. La Misma Canción, The Same Song, is an ongoing multi-sited project that centers the annual migrations of birds to discuss migration within Latinx communities and the interconnectedness of the Americas at large. The project was inspired by the artis’s realization that the birds he heard singing in San Antonio, Texas, would also be heard by his family and friends in El Salvador at a different stage of their migration. Ever-evolving, La Misma Canción includes field research, artist-led bird walks and artmaking workshops.
For La Trienal, Menjívar facilitated a series of community workshops in June and July 2024 in San Antonio and New York City. He asked participants to create dual-sided signs to welcome and bid farewell to migrating birds in each city. A selection of these signs is displayed here on a rotating basis. Together, they acknowledge migration as a natural process and reframe our reactions to these movements as one of generosity.
Wall label text written by curatorial team.
