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This new exhibit, amalga,  explores the immigrant experience through the works of Chicago artists, Maria Burundarena, Maria Gaspar, Laleh Motlagh, and Ebony G. Patterson. It is on view at the Durand Art Institute at Lake Forest College from November 13 through December 10, 2025.

Despite humanity’s history of travel and exchange as a core component of creating and expanding culture, immigration has come to be perceived as a harshly policed and innately hostile act while evidence of the colonial past and its complex residual effects are actively being resisted, repressed, and even erased. By stepping into the gallery space, itself an act of transition, visitors are confronted with a captivating material and sensory experience only possible in a disparate and unified human tapestry—an amalga. 

Derived from the word ‘amalgamation’, amalga aims to illustrate the multifaceted immigrant experience and ideal of the ‘melting pot’ as one deeply entangled with personal history, ways of seeing, and the balancing act of constructing a hybridized cultural identity. Through a combination of installation, photography, painting and other media, these artists delve into the complexities of the politicized immigrant body in relation to displacement, memory and resilience.