Ely Bulnes

Ely Bulnes

[BA] Painting and Drawing with Minor in Political Science

All of Heaven Is Above Us

All of Heaven Is Above Us conveys the helplessness of those living through the human rights violations occurring presently at the Mexican-American border. There are fifty figures, rendered in India ink, which depict Latin American children in U.S. border camp facilities. Figures are crowded together, layered on top of one another creating depth and implying that these figures occupy the same room together. They recede into space, layered on top of one another, and they mimic the crowded and claustrophobic conditions that each person experiences. Several figures are shrouded in Mylar blankets, which have been rendered with a complex, uncertain, and almost surreal texture which mirrors the complex, uncertain, surreal and very cruel circumstances that these children experience. 

The details of the images are representations of real experiences: teen mothers with breast milk stains on their shirts, ramen noodles meals, rooms so crowded that one must tip toe over several bodies to move through. There was a point in time when the inhumanity of the border facilities was making headlines, but these reports now seem to dwell only in the periphery of the social consciousness. This work gleans the details from news articles of the living conditions that Latin American children have been facing for months and presents them to the viewer point-blank. No language, no opinion piece, no toxic comment sections. This is really happening.