Graciela DeAnda, Juan’s Backpack, Mixed Media Backpack, 2026

The Body Carries Everything | El Cuerpo Lo Lleva Todo

Graciela DeAnda

On view: August 22, 2026 - January 24, 2027

Jurors: Thoren Sheppard, Kaitlyn Walsh

Artist Statement

The Body Carries Everything is an immersive installation exploring migration through memory, family history, material, and lived experience. The exhibition asks what a person carries when crossing a border, not only what can fit inside a backpack, but the memories, fears, faith, responsibilities, relationships, and hopes that remain within the body long after a journey has ended.

As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, I approach migration through stories that have shaped my understanding of family and belonging. My father’s experience crossing the U.S. Mexico border became an important starting point for this work, but the installation expands beyond a single story through conversations and collaboration with others who have experienced migration.

Backpacks and personal belongings become portraits of the people who carried them. Corn husks, earth, wood, fabric, sound, photographs, and other materials transform the gallery into a space where memory can be encountered physically. A shelter-like structure references the temporary spaces created during a journey, while layered sounds, including footsteps, water, voices, prayer, and fragments of oral history, bring intimate memories into the exhibition space.

Rather than attempting to represent migration as one universal experience, The Body Carries Everything considers the individual histories held within it. Some things are carried by choice. Others are inherited. Some are left behind physically but remain present through memory.

This work is ultimately about the body as an archive: a place where home, loss, resilience, family, and memory continue to live. It asks viewers to consider not only what people carry across borders, but what continues to be carried years after arriving somewhere new.

Artist Bio

Graciela DeAnda is a Mexican American interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores migration, memory, identity, family, and belonging. Working across photography, installation, video, sound, textiles, and alternative photographic processes, she examines the ways personal and collective histories are carried through bodies, objects, and place.

As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, DeAnda draws from family histories alongside

collaborative storytelling to consider the emotional and physical experiences surrounding migration. Her work often incorporates personal belongings, oral histories, domestic materials, and culturally significant objects as a way of preserving stories that might otherwise go unseen or unheard.

DeAnda received her MFA in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and her BFA in Photography with a minor in Business Administration from the University of South Dakota. Her work has been exhibited and published throughout the Midwest and beyond, and her practice continues to center storytelling, community, and the preservation of lived experience.

MCAD’s Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies program is a community of makers, thinkers, researchers, and creative professionals working in a mentor-based, interdisciplinary environment. Our four-semester curriculum is designed to expand your thinking as you take advantage of the Twin Cities’ vibrant art and design scene. Students are invited to be strongly self-directed as they set personalized goals to guide each semester, as well as their overall time in the program.