The challenge of being bicultural and bilingual is that I live concurrently in two different worlds. I adapt to both worlds, but adapting involves losing some part of myself in order to grow. I embrace these two worlds in my art, melding visual and cultural references from both to produce artwork with a magical realism twist. – Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Salvador Jiménez-Flores (b. 1985, Jalisco, México) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is both playful and provocative, addressing critical issues of migration, cultural hybridity, and resilience. Currently based in Chicago, IL, where in addition to his career as an artist he is also a professor for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he centers his creative work on his experiences as a bicultural immigrant.
On the 80-foot wall in the East Gallery, Jiménez-Flores created Memoria, Tierra, Trabajo: A Glimpse of the Semiquincentenial, a mural painted with earthen pigments. At a time when the United States is celebrating the 250th anniversary of becoming a nation, this mural presents an unfolding timeline and counter-narrative of colonization, labor, and migration in the Americas. Jiménez-Flores’ family has migrated between México and the United States over three generations through programs that invited migrant labor to build railroads or to work in agriculture. This movement is part of a broader history of migratory patterns across the Americas that predate European contact and colonialism. The exchange of ideas, cosmologies, food traditions, languages, art, and people has been a constant flow long before the current border lines were established or trade agreements and/or tariffs defined our economies. Layered with cultural references and symbols, the mural weaves the difficult histories of exclusion, violence, and erasure, transforming itself into a living document of memory and the possibility of justice.
On the opposite wall, the installation Gritos Grabados en la Penca del Nopal features a central portrait of the artist surrounded by ceramic cactus (nopal) paddles and incendiary flames with messages of protest serving as a collective expression intertwining personal and political narratives. The “gritos” (cries or screams) provide a powerful emotional release, a declaration of freedom, and a demand for justice and human dignity.
Outside the gallery in the park’s hedge garden and along its Main Loop are two bronze sculptures that incorporate a hybridization of the human form with the nopal and symbols emblematic of México and Mesoamerica. These works serve as metaphors for the strength and endurance of marginalized communities. They envision a future where hybrid identities are celebrated rather than excluded. Through this series, Jiménez-Flores offers a poignant and hopeful vision of what it means to resist, adapt, and thrive in the face of adversity.
This body of artwork asks us to reflect on the complex and intertwined history of migration and identity at both the individual and geopolitical levels, particularly within the current intensified context of migration and mass deportations. Raíces & Resistencias, or roots and resistance, honors those who cross borders with resilience, driven not solely by opportunity, but by the need for survival, dignity, and the right to dream. These works invite us to consider the power of art to speak truth, to remember, to evoke empathy, to foster understanding in an increasingly diverse society, and to point us towards a better future.
About Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Salvador Jiménez-Flores (b. 1985, Jalisco, Mexico) is Associate Professor and Chair of Ceramics at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, and he participated in the 2022 GFS exhibition Fragile: Earth which was co-produced with The Color Network, an organization which he was a former organizing member. He is also an organizing member of the Instituto Gráfico de Chicago, an organization inspired by the socio-political art of Mexico’s Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People’s Print Workshop) and uses art as a platform to inform and generate community discourse about urgent social issues.
A recipient of many awards, fellowships, grants, and residencies, Jiménez-Flores has been an Artist in Residence at the Harvard Ceramics Program, Office of the Arts at Harvard University, MA; the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry, WI; the Museum of Glass, NY; and Haystack Mountain School of Craft, ME. He is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants, The New England Foundation for the Arts, Threewalls’ RaD Lab+Outside the Walls Fellowship Grant, and is a 2021 United States Artist Fellow. Jiménez-Flores is also an organizing member of the Instituto Gráfico de Chicago. His work has been exhibited at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI; the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, among others.
Salvador Jiménez-Flores: Raíces & Resistencias is made possible, in part, by the Brooke Barrie Art Fund. Support is provided, in part, by The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a division of the NJ Department of State, and a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Atlantic Foundation.
Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Memoria, Tierra, Trabajo: A Glimpse of the Semiquincentennial, 2025, clay slip, oxides, H. 15 x W. 89 feet, Courtesy of the Artist; Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Memoria, Tierra, Trabajo: A Glimpse of the Semiquincentennial, 2025 (detail), clay slip, oxides, H. 15 x W. 89 feet, Courtesy of the Artist; Salvador Jiménez-Flores, La resistencia de los nopales híbridos: El Susurro del Desierto/The Resistance of the Hybrid Cacti: The Desert’s Whisper, 2025, cast bronze, H. 109 x W. 92 x D. 36 inches (base not pictured H. 36 x W. 72 x D. 72 inches), Collection of the Artist; Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Caminantes/Wayfarers, 2023, cast bronze, Cor Ten, H. 99 x W. 48 x D. 48 inches, Courtesy of the Artist; Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Gritos grabados en la penca del nopal, 2025, clay slip, oxides, ceramic, dimensions variable, Courtesy of the Artist; All photos: David Michael Howarth Photography
