Arleene Correa Valencia’s aluminum and LED light sculpture Un Momento Mas/One More Moment is an expression of longing. The child sits on the father’s lap, but there is a line separating them, a border made hard by light. Yet it’s also light that unites the two figures in a tug between love and pain.

Correa Valencia, who lives in Napa, California, came with her family from Mexico in 1997 when she was 3. She calls her body of work—which includes textile pieces, some made with US flags, and oil paintings—a “love letter” to her father, who migrated first. Most of her titles come from letters she wrote to him while they were separated.

“For my entire life, I’ve wondered how it’s possible for a parent to leave their child behind, to sacrifice that moment of being together,” Correa Valencia says. Then, in 2019, her niece was born and she realized that a person can love a child so much they’ll make incredible sacrifices. “I understood how you can hold this tiny being and want to give them the world. I understood how two people can be together and apart at the same time.”

Un Momento Mas, 2023, modeled on her brother and nephew and fabricated from mirror-like aluminum by a metal shop in Mexico City, urges viewers to consider their own relationships. “There is a moment in the darkness when all that matters is this connection to this other human being,” Correa Valencia says. “If we can understand that love and the power of that light, then we can understand each other’s humanity.”

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