Panel Discussion: Paisana

In connection with Paisana, her exhibition developed during her 2024–2025 residency at UMOCA, artist Sara Serratos joins a group of invited panelists for a public conversation on recognition, mistranslation, and the politics of belonging.

Paisana examines how governmental, social, and labor systems regulate, classify, and extract from migrant bodies. The title references the Spanish feminine form of paisano—a word that signals shared origin, intimacy, and trust within Mexican communities in the United States, while remaining only partially legible outside that context. Serratos’ work inhabits this space of uneven understanding, asking who is recognized, by whom, and under what conditions.

This panel brings together voices from the Latinx community who are also engaged in preserving and advocating Latinx heritage to reflect on migration as a lived condition shaped by vulnerability, negotiation, and persistent longing. The conversation will consider how visibility is produced and managed, why immigrants are often framed as betrayers of the communities they leave yet treated as outsiders in their new homes, and what it means to live between systems not of one’s own making.

PANELISTS

Deyanira Cerrito, Ambassador of Mexican Cultural Heritage
Maru Quevedo, Founder, SISTER
Renato Olmedo-González, Public Art Program Manager, Salt Lake City Arts Council
Sara Serratos, Artist-in-Residence, UMOCA

MODERATOR

Luis Novoa, Executive Director, Artes de Mexico en Utah

Held during the month of International Women’s Day, this discussion creates space for collective reflection on gendered language, belonging, and the limits of translation—inviting audiences to listen closely, sit with partial understanding, and consider what recognition can make possible.

Supported by Artes de Mexico en Utah