For many individuals who have experienced forced migration, the concept of “return” extends far beyond a geographical location. It is tied to identity, memory, and a yearning for wholeness. Lorena Molina’s multi-media exhibition, Cuando el regreso es la cosecha (When the Return is the Harvest), is an invitation to participate in a shared space that celebrates cultural agency and belonging. Molina provides an opportunity for both personal and collective reflection on the effects of displacement.
Molina’s contemplation centers on her homeland, El Salvador, and she questions what it might have looked like without the intervention of the United States. She imagines a reality where families could remain united, fighting for their future and enjoying the land without fear of external forces. The vision of return is rooted not only in the land itself but in the harvest, in a version of herself and her life that was never fully realized. The return is not just to a place but to an idea of what could have been had history taken a different course.
In today’s socio-political context, where mass deportations and policies target marginalized communities and continue to shape lives, Molina’s work touches on the politics of agency—the right to choose where one belongs. For some, returning to their homeland is an impossibility, while for others, the place they long for may no longer exist, or perhaps it never truly did. Regardless, the longing persists—not as a desire to return to a past that can never be reclaimed, but as a forward-looking vision for the future. In this future, people can exist fully without needing to assimilate or erase their identities to belong.
The ecologies in Molina’s exhibition—corn, beans, coffee, banana, medicinal plants, and wild Texas flowers—carry deep political, historical, and cultural weight. Corn, beans, and coffee have long been central to resistance, survival, and colonization in El Salvador and Latin America. Coffee, a commodity tied to exploitative labor and land dispossession, underscores how agriculture has been weaponized against communities. In contrast, wildflowers provide nourishment for butterflies along their migration route, offering sustenance to those in transit.
Alongside the plants, barrels collect water, echoing those in Molina’s home in El Salvador, used to harvest rainwater. This practice, both practical and symbolic, reflects an act of foresight—caring for the land and the future. Within the space, the echoes of Molina’s family’s whistling and humming create a soundscape of waiting and longing. These sounds, which have also been used historically as secret codes in times of war, carry the weight of patience and resistance. In Molina’s work, they visualize time: waiting to return, belong, and exist as quiet yet potent signs of joy and longing.
Jars of curtido, fermented in her aunt’s home, serve as time capsules—preserving the bacteria of her family’s space while safeguarding food for the future. Like the plants, water, and sound, they embody endurance, transformation, a form of waiting, and the unseen ways migration lingers within the body and across generations.
Cuando el regreso es la cosecha is both a prayer and a communal act. Visitors are encouraged to engage with the space by contributing personal objects that hold significance to them, allowing the exhibition to evolve as a living, breathing entity. This act of participation embodies collective memory, made tangible through shared activation. In this space, visitors can also plant seeds, witness performances by a cumbia band singing songs of return and engage in poetry and conversation that foster reflection and a sense of community.
“May we return where we are loved, seen, appreciated, celebrated—not just tolerated.” Molina’s words express a deep desire for a world where individuals can feel whole, safe, and embraced by a community that celebrates and mourns alongside them. Lorena Molina’s Artpace exhibition is a vision of belonging and solidarity and a powerful call for unity in a landscape shaped by displacement and longing.
–Ada Smith Genitempo, Manager of Residencies and Exhibitions
