Seguimos Caminando (We Keep Walking)

Throughout her body of work, Michelle Angela Ortiz engages with experiences of immigration in Philadelphia, especially through family stories and intergenerational histories. For Monument Lab, Ortiz’s Seguimos Caminando (We Keep Walking) imagined the gates of City Hall as a space of imaginative projection, juxtaposed with hundreds of sculptures on the building that mark the historic and mythic past of the city. In a series of animated projections held on Wednesday and Friday evenings throughout the exhibition, Ortiz honored mothers previously or currently unjustly detained at Berks Detention Center, a prison outside of Philadelphia for immigrant families. The animated images in her moving monument originated from compiled writings from two mothers sharing their stories while detained at Berks. Ortiz worked on Seguimos Caminando with the Shut Down Berks Coalition and the mothers detained at Berks, and organized a creative action at City Hall with Shut Down Berks during the exhibition.

Collaborators: Jeff Bethea, Gralin Hughes, Klip Collective, Jose Mazariegos, Mothers at Berks, Jasmine Rivera, and Shut Down Berks Coalition.

Major support for Monument Lab projects staged in Philadelphia’s five squares provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. An expanded artist roster and projects at additional neighborhood sites made possible by the William Penn Foundation. Lead corporate support provided by Bank of America. Generous additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Location Note: Work is no longer on view at this location.