Tom Kiefer at SLU
Release date: Jan. 5, 2022
Tom Kiefer’s ongoing project “El Sueño Americano / The American Dream” centers on photographs of objects confiscated from migrants and asylum seekers at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility near Ajo, Arizona. Kiefer recovered the items while working there part-time as a janitor and groundskeeper. In Fall 2021, MOCRA and the Saint Louis University Museum of Art (SLUMA) presented simultaneous exhibitions of Kiefer’s work.
Programs
Several programs were held in conjunction with the exhibitions.
Sobrevida: A Conversation with Prof. Daisy Vargas
On Nov. 3, 2021, Dr. Daisy Vargas explored life and death at the Mexico-U.S. borderlands through the material objects that migrants bring on their journeys. This talke was part of The Religion and Complex Social Issues series, which began in fall 2017 to provide informative, thoughtful, discussion-oriented opportunities for students, faculty, and various other communities of Saint Louis University to engage topics of enormous consequence through the frameworks of theology and religion.
Conversations with Photographer Tom Kiefer
This panel discussion took place on Nov. 6, 2021.
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Exhibition Videos
The MOCRA exhibition “Pertenencias / Belongings” placed Kiefer’s photographs within a broader consideration of the human need to migrate, driven by the need not only to survive, but to flourish in body, mind and spirit. This human drive often draws on the power of hope and faith, which are reflected and manifested in many of the objects Kiefer documents. The exhibition invited reflection on what it means to possess and what it means to lose, and what it means to belong: how we define who is included and who is excluded, how we distinguish between the sacred and the ordinary, and how those boundaries are enforced.
“Pertenencias / Belongings” Overview
This video gives a walkthrough and overview of the full exhibition.
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Backpacks
This video features Kiefer and University of Arizona professor Daisy Vargas discussing a series of backpacks featured in “Pertenencias.“
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Bordados
This video features University of Arizona professor Daisy Vargas discussing the significance of hand-embroidered textiles featured in “Pertenencias.”
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Libations
This video features University of Arizona professor Daisy Vargas discussing the significance of photographs of bottles of cologne, perfume, and rubbing alcohol featured in “Pertenencias.”
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Related Exhibition
Tom Kiefer: Pertenencias / Belongings
Credits
The exhibitions and events were co-sponsored by Lived Religion in the Digital Age, with the generous support of the SLU College of Arts and Sciences and the Henry Luce Foundation.
Producer: David Brinker
Videography and editing: Rachel Lindsey
Featured Presenters
Tom Kiefer (b. 1959, Wichita, KS) is an artist based in Ajo, Arizona. Kiefer’s photographic projects explore the infrastructure and cultural landscapes of the United States, blending fine art and documentary modes. His previous project Journey West Exhibit (2007) chronicled the landscape, structures, and cultural markers connecting the Arizona cities of Phoenix, Tucson, and Ajo. Kiefer’s work has been exhibited across the US, including the Fuller Craft Museum (Boston, MA); the Saugatuck Center for the Arts (Saugatuck, MI); the Northlight Gallery at Arizona State University (Phoenix, AZ); ArtsXchange (St. Petersburg, FL); and ArtPrize 2018 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2015, Kiefer was included in LensCulture’s Top 50 Emerging Photographers and Photolucida’s Top 50 Critical Mass lists, and has been featured in news publications nationally and internationally.
Daisy Vargas, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona. Dr. Vargas specializes in Catholicism in the Americas; race, ethnicity, and religion in the United States; and Latina/o religion. Her current project, “Mexican Religion on Trial: Race, Religion, and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” traces the history of Mexican religion, race, and the law from the nineteenth century into the contemporary moment, positioning current legal debates about Mexican religion within a larger history of anti-Mexican and anti-Catholic attitudes in the United States. She has served as an ethnographic field research for the Institute for the Study of Immigration and Religion since 2012. In 2017, she was awarded a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Dr. Vargas serves as co-chair of the Latina/o and Latin American Religion section for the American Academy of Religion-Western Region, and as a steering committee member for the Religions in the Latina/o Americas unit for the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Vargas is co-curator of the MOCRA exhibition “Tom Kiefer: Pertenencias / Belongings.”
Elizabeth Eikmann, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Fellow in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. She received the Ph.D. in American Studies from SLU in 2021 and was the 2020–2021 Religion and Public Life Graduate Fellow with Lived Religion in the Digital Age. Dr. Eikmann consulted on the MOCRA exhibition, “Tom Kiefer: Pertenencias / Belongings.”
Petruta Lipan is the Executive Director of Saint Louis University Museums and Galleries, including the Saint Louis University Museum of Art, Samuel Cupples House, and the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art. Her expertise is in 20th- and 21st-century art and semiotics of art with a particular focus on the process of meaning reconstruction determined by cultural schemata.