A 6-foot high, 30-foot long mural — created at Mary Baldwin University to depict the perilous journey Central American children face as they cross the border into the United States — was the centerpiece at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California, at the conference Border/Fracture: Cultural Change and Resistance Under the Narcotraffic Regime earlier this month.
Mary Baldwin Artist-in-Residence Claudia Bernardi will also present the Tree of Life mural at the University of California at Berkeley, where it will be the centerpiece of an upcoming conference at the Center of Latin American Studies.
During May Term 2015, Mary Baldwin students and faculty teamed up with Bernardi and her colleagues from El Salvador from the School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin / Walls of Hope to create the mural along with undocumented immigrant children detained at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Detention Center.
The mural begins with the nighttime crossing of the U.S./Mexican border over water and then documents the trekking of many unfamiliar miles in the desert. The centerpiece is the tree of life: a bright, powerful and generous force that spans from left to right, bridging the pain of the crossing to the possibility of a happier life in the United States.
A human rights activist, Bernardi has worked with Mary Baldwin students for the last decade, creating murals in Staunton and Waynesboro — including the colorful mural outside the Spencer Center for Civic and Global Engagement on campus — and abroad that show how art can heal communities torn apart by war.
Bernardi’s School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin / Walls of Hope is an international art and human rights project of art, education, conflict resolution, crime prevention, diplomacy building, community development, and preservation of historic memory. Their mission is to create bridges of collaboration with local and political agencies using art as a contribution to the social planning and the development of leadership roles among the participants who face the challenges of collapsed economies.