ABOUT ROOTS AND RESISTENCE AT GFS, NEW JERSEY

From September 28, 2025, through August 1, 2027, Grounds For Sculpture (GFS) in New Jersey will present Raíces & Resistencias (Roots & Resistance), a solo exhibition by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Salvador Jiménez-Flores. Curated by Gary Garrido Schneider, GFS’s Executive Director, the show addresses migration, cultural hybridity, and the resilience of communities navigating adversity.

The exhibition features both outdoor installations and new works conceived for the East Gallery, where Jiménez-Flores unfolds a visual universe infused with bicultural references and a touch of magical realism. Highlights include Memoria, Tierra, Trabajo: A Glimpse of the Semiquincentenial, an 80-foot mural painted with earth pigments that offers a chronology and counternarrative of colonization, labor, and migration in the Americas, in dialogue with the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution.

On the gallery’s opposite wall, the installation Gritos grabados en la penca del nopal features a central portrait of the artist surrounded by ceramic nopal (prickly pear cactus) 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.

The outdoor path continues through GFS’s hedge garden, where two large bronze sculptures are installed: Wayfarers, previously exhibited in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, La resistencia de los nopales híbridos: El Susurro del Desierto/The Resistance of the Hybrid Cacti: The Desert’s Whisper, commissioned by GFS for its permanent collection. Both works merge the human form with the resilient nopal cactus, a symbol of survival under harsh conditions, to honor migrant journeys and envision a future where hybrid identities are embraced rather than marginalized.

“The challenge of being bicultural and bilingual is living in two worlds at once. I embrace both worlds in my art, merging their cultural references to create something new,” says Jiménez-Flores. His deeply personal narrative becomes a visual homage to those who cross borders—driven not only by opportunity, but by the need to survive, the pursuit of dignity, and the right to dream.

According to Garrido Schneider, the exhibition underscores the power of art to foster empathy and understanding: “Salvador’s work tells a broader, more nuanced story about what it means to belong to more than one place.”