The Work of Arte Urgente

This essay examines how migrant/refugee youth from Central America use their bodies as part of collaborative performances in which they narrate their experiences as social actors within the context of the so-called “child migrant crisis.” In Arte Urgente (Urgent Art) workshops organized by Caleb Duarte with students from Fremont High School’s Newcomer Education Support and Transition (NEST) Program, they created performances in which they staged a response to the structural conditions that compelled them to migrate and that shaped their everyday lives. The emphasis on performance resonates with the experience of these young people, who have to act, perform, and consciously play to a variety of specific audiences starting from the time they leave home. In addition to these performances, they also created a public artwork, the Embassy of the Refugee, in which they enact a performative agency, rather than seeking recognition from the US settler state. Although these migrant/refugee youth are for the most part excluded from having political agency within the process of applying for asylum, I argue that through their artwork they imagine other possibilities for themselves and for others outside the purview of state policies.