We invite you to join us for “Arte de Lágrimas,” an exhibit of artwork drawn by asylum seekers in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. The opening will also feature a panel, featuring Eduardo Fernandez and exhibit curator Gregory Cuéllar. A reception will follow the conversation.

Arte de Lágrimas (art of tears) is a traveling exhibit of drawings made by Central American refugee children and youth crossing the Texas-Mexico border. These drawings were made after the children had just been released from the McAllen, Texas, detention center. Arte de Lágrimas has partnered with Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley to set up art stations at the Sacred Heart Church Reflief Center and McAllen Central Bus Station, and the exhibit has been on display at churches and community centers throughout Texas.

Rev. Dr. Gregory Cuéllar is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Austin Theological Seminary. As a biblical scholar, he is interested in alternative ways of reading the biblical text, in particular those that are rooted in a broader contrapuntal position of liberation. He has written on topics related to the U.S. Mexico borderlands, Latino/a immigration, race, and empire. Within the parameters of postcolonial theory, migration studies, museum studies, and various types of advocacy criticism, his biblical research seeks to expose the nefarious forms of power in Western hermeneutical and epistemological regimes.

Rev. Dr. Eduardo Fernandez, SJ, teaches practical theology and missiology at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He publishes, gives workshops and retreats, and assists at local parishes.  Among his books are Mexican American Catholics; La Vida Sacra: Contemporary Hispanic Sacramental Theology (with James Empereur); Culture-Sensitive Ministry: Helpful Strategies for Pastoral Ministers (with Kenneth McGuire and  Anne Hansen);  and hislatest, Doing Theology as If People Mattered: Encounters in Contextual Theology (with Deborah Ross and Stephen Bevans). He is currently completing two books, Resacralizing the Other at the US-Mexico Border for Routledge (2020) and Religion in Immigrant Detention: Resisting Faiths in a State of Removal for Palgrave (forthcoming). His most recent book is titled, Empire, the British Museum, and the Making of the Biblical Scholar in the Nineteenth Century Archival Criticism (Palgrave, 2019).