Opening Reception: October 2, 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates: October 2, 2026 - November 14, 2026

This exhibition brings together a diverse group of national and regional artists, creatives, and documentarians in response to the current political and social landscape surrounding migration and immigration. Projects in the exhibition amplify immigrant voices, document criminalization and detention, examine border politics and architecture, and give impacted people space to share diverse immigration stories.

Sanctuary aims to center the human lives behind political rhetoric, asking how belonging is made and denied, and how care and resilience persist. It will include testimony and creative resistance, while countering simplistic and divisive narratives, and insisting on dignity, with the goal of documenting our current moment and calling for human rights for all.

Included in the exhibition will be art by immigrants of all backgrounds and geographies. Read the full submission guidelines and submit your artwork by Sept. 1 here: https://form.jotform.com/261576188903063

Additionally, the exhibition will feature a community video project featuring 100 immigration stories. *Please contact us if you would like to participate or help: bleu@rochestercontemporary.org / 585 461 2222

ABOUT THE IMAGE

top: Pamela Dodds, USA-Mexico Border Barrier from the project "Documenting Border Barriers"
bottom: Saman & Sasan Oskouei, US/Mexico Border, San Diego (stills from color video made in collaboration with Spenser Little)

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Anaglog (Sound of Sanctuary) is the interdisciplinary sound practice of Sean Mulligan, a Rochester-based musician, improviser, and teaching artist whose work engages listening as performance, framing sound as co-regulation, sonic journalism, and modern ritual. Rooted in improvised music and participatory practice, Anaglog develops projects that move between concert settings, healthcare environments, public institutions, and collaborative community contexts. Mulligan has provided live music for patients, families, and staff through initiatives including Eastman Performing Arts Medicine and Project: Music Heals Us Vital Sounds Initiative, with performances at Strong Memorial Hospital, Highland Hospital, Cedars-Sinai, and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. His work also extends into community and residential care, including facilitation of music-based programming for older adults living with dementia at Marian House, as well as songwriting and creative expression work with incarcerated individuals through Music for the Future at Lovelock Correctional Facility in Nevada. As a performer, Mulligan has appeared at venues including the Irish National Concert Hall, Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Eastman Kodak Theatre, Artisan Works, The Bop Shop, The Westside Bowl, and has collaborated with artists including Palaver Strings, Head to the Roots, TimeWarp Trio, The Bootleg Beatles, and Renée Fleming. Mulligan is currently completing supervised clinical internship work with Jennifer Loucks at the Golisano Autism Center and in private practice with Music with Jenn, through which he is nearing music therapy credentialing. His practice is grounded in reimagining the traditional separation between audience and performer, cultivating contemporary sanctuary through shared listening, presence, and participatory performance.

Pamela Araya is a Costa Rican-born interdisciplinary artist whose work explores immigration, cultural identity, memory, and resilience. Inspired by her experiences growing up in Costa Rica and later immigrating to Brooklyn, New York, she creates paintings and mixed-media works that reflect personal stories of belonging, identity, and hope. Araya is an Adjunct Instructor of Art at Finger Lakes Community College. Her work has been exhibited throughout New York and Connecticut, including a solo exhibition at the National Women's Hall of Fame and the group exhibition Immigrant Song at the Schelfhaudt Gallery, University of Bridgeport. She is the recipient of the 2024 Dedalus Foundation Alumni Grant and the 2024 RoCo Members Show Record Archive Award.

Pamela Dodds (b. 1956, Halifax, N.S. Canada) works in printmaking, drawing and painting. Through her work, she explores the complexities and nuances of interpersonal relationships, and the reflection of these narratives in communities and societies. Purchasers include Cleveland Museum of Art, USA, Krakow Print Society, Poland, and McMaster Museum of Art, Canada. She lives and works in Toronto. Documenting Border Barriers, was first exhibited in Toronto, then at University of Quebec in Montreal, 2022, and at Museo de Arte, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, 2023, just steps south of the Border Wall, and in Bolzano-Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy, 2025-26. In 2024, the work received awards at international printmaking bi/triennials in Brussels, Belgium, and Krakow, Poland. Dodds engages with the borders and migration community, including scholars, journalists, and people with lived experiences, presenting this work as a panelist at international university conferences in Arizona, Canada and Morocco. This is the first exhibition of the full installation in the USA.

Jim Mott is a Rochester-based artist who uses landscape painting as a way to engage both contemplatively and dynamically with his surroundings, community, and culture. His work typically focuses on ordinary scenes or overlooked aspects of everyday experience. And with projects such as his nationally recognized Itinerant Artist Project and Landscape Lottery, he has been able to combine an intimate approach to painting with effective public outreach. Mott has been profiled in or on Explore Art Magazine, American Artist, the Out of Bounds Radio Hour, CBC Radio, and the NBC Today Show. He has an MFA in Painting from the University of Michigan, along with a BA in Religion and Visual Studies from Dartmouth College and a BS in Environmental Science from SUNY Brockport. He is married to the writer Sonja Livingston.

Saman Oskouei (b. 1985) and Sasan Oskouei (b. 1991) are multidisciplinary artists and brothers from Tabriz, Iran, currently located in Brooklyn, New York. With strong roots in urban culture, the brothers have collaboratively created a large portfolio consisting of installation, painting, sculpture, interventions, video and photography. From a vein of eloquent site-specific commentary on pressing political and social issues, the Oskouei brothers have gradually developed an abstract visual language – a continuation of their quest for simple yet powerful visual statements. Nature is a constant reference in their current practice and has informed the duo’s work since their beginnings in Iran, where the mountainous regions around Tabriz offered freedom from the authoritarian rule of the Islamic Republic. It has since formed the backdrop of concise comments on climate change, the refugee crisis and political problems. At this point, their ongoing investigation into the rhythms of nature and the place of its changing seasons in our imagination has paved the way for a visual and sculptural idiom that takes the form of quiet, poetic gestures. Meditating on the resilience and adaptability of the natural forces, the artists envision humanity forever enfolded in the ongoing processes of a nature in constant flux. Rather than loud or loaded statements, the Oskouei brothers excel in artistic expressions of an eye-opening lucidity that foster hope and continue to generate alternatives to the status quo. Threaded through their practice is the constant reminder that right around the corner of the cities and societies we have built, there is always the possibility of a different world.

Tom Policano

Julio Salgado (b.1983) is a gay Mexican-born artist who grew up in Long Beach, California.[1][2] Through the use of art, Salgado has become a well-known activist within the DREAM Act movement. Salgado uses his art to empower undocumented and queer people by telling their story and putting a human face to the issue. He has worked on various art projects that address anti-immigrant discourse, the issues of what it means to be undocumented, and what it means to be undocu-queer. One of his more well-known projects is a series of satire images addressing American Apparel’s use of a farm worker in one of their ads in the summer of 2011.[3]

Cher Valentino is a New York-based visual artist whose art now takes center stage in the second phase of her life. After a multifaceted career in arts coordination and publishing, she is focused on creating and exhibiting work that addresses pressing social issues. She has been awarded two New York State Council on the Arts grants and has exhibited at venues across upstate New York. Previously, as Coordinator of the Letchworth Arts & Crafts Show & Sale with the Arts Council for Wyoming County, she helped present one of the region’s signature arts events. She also founded and directed Our USA Magazine, guiding its national distribution and visual identity. Today, her background in curation, design, and storytelling supports a socially engaged studio practice dedicated to amplifying community voices.

Arleene Correa Valencia (b. 1993, Michoacán, Mexico) is an inaugural recipient of the Bay Area Fellowship at Headlands Center for the Arts and received a regional Emmy award for her feature REPRESENT: Portraits of Napa Workers: Arleene Correa Valencia by KQED Arts. In 2023, Correa Valencia was named a Eureka Fellow by the Fleishhacker Foundation and a Finalist for the SECA Award through the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In Fall 2023, Correa Valencia’s work was featured in a two-person booth presentation (alongside work by Stephanie Syjuco) for Focus at The Armory Show, curated by Candice Hopkins, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Forge Project. In 2021-2022, Correa Valencia was the subject of a solo exhibition, Llévame Contigo, Yo Quiero Estar Contigo, at the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 2022, Correa Valencia had her first international solo exhibition, (in)visibles En La Oscuridad (De Regreso A Casa) at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico, curated by Guadalupe García and generously sponsored by The ANT Project. Also in 2022, Correa Valencia also opened Por favor, no me olvides / Please, don’t forget me at MCA Gallery in Ontario, Canada, her first major international solo presentation at a gallery. Catharine Clark Gallery presented her solo exhibition, Aveces Quiero Llorar Porque Te Extraño, Pero Mi Mami Dice Que Estás Bien Y Pronto Estaremos Juntos Otra Vez / Sometimes I Want To Cry Because I Miss You, But My Mom Says That You’re Fine & That We’ll Soon Be Together Again, in 2022. In 2023, Correa Valencia’s work was featured in exhibitions at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Oregon, San Francisco Arts Commission, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York City, and Alfred University, New York. Her work is currently featured in BAN9: Bay Area Now 9 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In Summer and Fall 2024, she will be the subject of solo exhibitions at the Bolinas Museum and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Correa Valencia received her MFA from California College of the Arts. One of four children originally from Arteaga, Michoacán, Mexico, Correa Valencia is a beneficiary of DACA (Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals) and is on a path to becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States. The Correa Valencia family fled to the United States in 1997 and found home in California’s Napa Valley. Correa Valencia’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; Crocker Art Museum; Utah Museum of Fine Arts; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand Valley State University Museum of Art, Ulrich Museum of Art; and 21c Museum Hotels. Based in Napa Valley, California, Correa Valencia has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2022

Worldwide Documentaries, founded in 1985 and based in Bloomfield, NY, is a nonprofit film company dedicated to carefully crafted films about the defining human rights issues of our time. For four decades, the organization has produced award-winning documentaries that inform global audiences, empower advocates, and sustain public engagement through educational and distribution initiatives. Its films: Running to Stand Still, Oh Mercy, Not My Life, A Closer Walk, The Cry of Reason, I'm Still Here, and Endgame, have explored issues ranging from genocide, HIV/AIDS, and human trafficking, to apartheid, and refugee displacement. Their Academy Award-nominated work has been supported by leading foundations, corporations, and government agencies, earned an international reputation for impactful storytelling and an enduring commitment to human rights. worldwidedocumentaries.com

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