MOTUS + Cindy Loya: Returning Home BMoCA is proud to partner with Motus Theater to present two consecutive temporary exhibitions in Present Box featuring visual artists Cindy Loya and paired with UndocuAmerica monologists Kiara Chávez. This partnership aims to de-escalate divisive beliefs surrounding immigration policies by amplifying intergenerational, family centric narratives reimagined through alternative media.

Cindy Loya is a Denver-based mixed media artist who was born in California and raised in Mexico until she returned to the US at sixteen. Loya uses textiles as a medium to narrate stories through various techniques, including embroidery, quilting, felting, and appliqué. For this project, Loya collaborated with UndocuAmerica monologist Kiara Chávez to visually represent her story Returning Home. At nineteen, Chávez was granted permission for “advanced parole” to leave the country as a DACA recipient to take care of her ill grandmother in Mexico. However, she was not guaranteed entry back to the US. Chávez juxtaposes the fear and uncertainty she felt of leaving one home with the triumph of returning to another one to reclaim her cultural roots. As a tribute, Loya centers a hand-painted portrait of Chávez holding an anatomical heart with a string of yarn, representing her umbilical cord that is connected back to Colima, Chávez’s ancestral birth home. The other body of work consists of a series of portraits taken from photographs of Chávez and her grandmother as well as Loya and her grandmother, all outlined in red embroidery floss to symbolize veins stemming from one heart. The lace fabric alludes to family members kept at bay just on the other side of a curtain-like veil. Although Loya and Chávez essentially moved in opposite directions across the border, their stories overlap as testimony to the power of lineage and the heartache of separation. Motus Theater creates original theater to facilitate community conversations on critical issues of our time.Working at the intersection of storytelling and public policy,

Motus uses the power of art to build alliances across diverse segments of our community and country. In 2022, Motus received Westword’s Best Theater Company Programming award. UndocuAmerica: Reclaiming Our Presence: In 2022, muralist Edica Pacha installed 12 murals in Colorado featuring 10 different Motus Theater UndocuAmerica project monologists with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The murals were accompanied by QR codes linking directly to videos of the monologists sharing their stories. Some murals were targets of vandalism fueled by antiimmigrant sentiment. Reclaiming Our Presence is an empowering and healing response in which the undocumented community can feel their stories and lives uplifted in the face of erasure and aggression. It affirms community power with the message that, when community members get hurt, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to coalesce, heal, and come back stronger.