In 2019, I began to return sporadically to Lake Tahoe. Having spent much of the previous five years producing in Mexico City, I wanted to return to the place where I had begun my work with a much sharper perspective on the living conditions of Latino migrant communities. I finally settled here, and in 2023, I start a series about undocumented migrant women working informally around the lake, one of California’s most exclusive vacation enclaves.
Tahoe is a national park nestled in the Sierra Nevada Mountains between California and Nevada. A protected reserve that offers visitors a place to enjoy nature, a wide variety of recreational offerings, and year-round recreational activities. Tahoe promotes a touristic lifestyle, built around slogans about an unwavering commitment to the environment and each other. Of course, these discourses exclude lower-income workers, generally migrants.
In Mexico, I built a practice around yoga exercises, dance classes, or learning pottery. For this new project, I propose that my co-workers (since I work in a restaurant in the area) attend ski touring classes, as none of them knew how to ski. Although Lake Tahoe attracts tourists and workers looking to enjoy the enormous offer of snow sports, irregular migrants live in another reality. Whether due to fear of going abroad because of their immigration status or the exhausting nature of their workdays, they barely enjoy the ‘natural paradise’ they have built.
The proposal is simple: we meet on free days, like any other visitor to the area, to go skiing. The photo shoots, however, have an intensely theatrical component: they are both a ski lesson and a comedy performance that we do together for the camera. Since they all work irregularly in the United States, I made extravagant animal masks to cover their faces. I also made the clothes that each of the participants wore during the skiing sessions. The costumes reinterpret an ancient highland tradition from southern Mexico. In the carnival of the Sierra de Putla, Oaxaca, the inhabitants dance dressed in tiliches, colorful garments made from rags or scraps that were left over or received as alms. The origin of this costume goes back to the isolation of the inhabitants of this small community, located in a mountainous area of Oaxaca, and their need to become self-sufficient and make their attire.
From this work, I have created several series, including «We are missing a burrito, guys» (2024), which features images from the ski touring lessons I conducted with migrant workers during the winter of 2023. The sound collects testimonies in a somewhat variegated way, like the tiliches. Several personal stories are told there; border crossings that overlap with the sound recordings of the classes themselves, the sound of the kitchen of the restaurant where we work together, breathing, and the soft sound of skis gliding across the snow.