Alivio y Asilo

About This Project

“Rooted in Curanderismo, a traditional medicine system, Alivio y Asilo interweaves contemporary portraiture and spiritual cleansing rites as antidotes against illnesses caused by colonization’s oppression, creating healing rituals resulting in works of art. Alivio y Asilo is an individualized and personal approach to portraiture that re-imagines the relationship between sitter and artist, as I will work closely with my subjects over an extended period of time, using intuitive wisdom and divine guidance. This project opens up new possibilities for what portraiture can achieve.

Last year, I started creating limpia portraits of my family members and felt a deep connection forming as I drew their faces over many hours and adorned them with materials specifically chosen for them. I felt my own relationships shifting and heard from different family members who I had drawn about how the process had profoundly affected them and led to releases of stored energy and emotions. This power of art, attention, and connection, of making others feel not only seen but glorified and ennobled, is something I want to continue to share with others. This portraiture series was exhibited at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles and was spotlighted in Artillery Magazine. 

Alivio y Asilo aims to bring people back to these ancient healing traditions, putting power and self-efficacy back in our hands to identify the root causes of disease. As an artist-healer, I will use paper, charcoal, beads, gorilla glue, prayer cards, ornate frames, family photos, and other atypical fine arts materials to create assemblages that not only document the limpia process but urge viewers to reframe their own narratives and family histories and to re-value what has been denigrated by the dominant culture.

My mission is to perform limpias for twelve subjects, particularly those whose lives are or have been affected by being undocumented. Each limpia will result in a custom-made portrait of that individual. Each portrait will be surrounded by handmade beads, some containing fragments of medicine used in the process, such as miniature family photos and medicinal herbs, and some in the shape of animals called upon spiritually during the limpia for certain curative properties. As the grandson of a curandera and myself a trained apprentice in this practice, I believe that Curanderismo is a gift from our ancestors, one that teaches us that the greatest medicine to heal from oppression is already inside us, thus centering our own Brownness as the medicine that will heal ourselves and our families.

In the United States, depictions of immigrants are often reduced to nameless masses on the margins toiling in fields and yards. This project will push viewers of the resulting portraits to examine these faces outside of existing hierarchies and challenge the status quo system of colonized medicine being used to address diseases that colonization itself has helped cause. I believe in the power of art to change both the way we think about ourselves and how society thinks about us. It reshapes a narrative that dishonors our spirit into one that uplifts it.

In collaboration with Erika Hirugami, Founder & CEO of CuratorLove, Federico Cuatlacualt, Founder of Rasquache Residency, who, alongside Hirugami Co-Founded UNDOC+Collective, and Dr. Sandy Lopez, Director of the Undocumented Student Resource Center of Northern Illinois University, to help find participants. I am excited to find new partnerships. If you are an individual or organization interested in participating with Alivio y Asilo, please contact me so we may discuss further details.

Alivio y Asilo will culminate in an exhibition to be experienced in New York City with Latchkey Gallery in 2024.”

Luis Alvaro Sahagun Nuño