Karen Navarro: Somos Millones

América Utópica is an ongoing art project that uses crowdsourced skin tones, data, language, and other materials to create mixed-media works that explore themes of race, migration, sense of belonging, identity between communities, and Navarro’s indigenous identity. Navarro’s discovery as an adult that she is a descendant of indigenous peoples from South America, combined with her experience migrating to the United States in 2014, deeply shook her understanding of identity. It sparked an interest in colorism, how minorities reconstruct identities, a migrant’s sense of belonging, their collective trauma, and the historical erasure of indigenous groups.

While navigating these subjects and trying to understand the historical and political implications of identity, Navarro couldn’t help but perceive herself as “the other.” Her otherness as a woman, as a Latin American immigrant, and as the byproduct of colonialism has made it difficult to find a sense of belonging. This feeling has inspired the creation of works that aim to reconnect Navarro with her ancestral Indigenous culture. Through the work, she creates moments of belonging, retaking ownership of her cultural identity, long erased and silenced by the historical white, colonial gaze. Historically, black and indigenous people of color have been – and continue to be – marginalized, discriminated against, and underrepresented. Migrants negotiate with a feeling of both acceptance and rejection, being native and outsider, as if no longer belonging in their home countries, but not fully belonging in their new homes either.

To speak about her migrant experience and connect it to the context of the United States, Navarro creates demographic portraits of America using skin colors submitted by participants. The quarantine which began in March 2020 completely halted her previous portraiture work. Soon after, the socio-political situation in the U.S. took a turn over the death of George Floyd, who was brutally murdered at the hands of the police. Navarro’s artistic process shifted in response. She began collecting images of skin tones via an open call from willing participants. Her curiosity about skin tones had grown steadily and expansively since she first moved to the U.S. and had to fill out a migration form for the first time, and later the census.

By exploring her ancestors’ culture, and her American immigrant experience, Navarro creates connections between her identities in the present time. These connections reinforce her vision of a more just future. América Utópica proposes an alternative space that addresses painful political histories while simultaneously carving out spaces for existence.

Karen Navarro is an Argentinian-born multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Houston. Navarro works on a diverse array of mediums that include photography, collage, the use of text and sculpture. Her image-based work and multimedia practice investigate the intersections of identity, representation, race, and belonging in reference to her migrant experience, her Indigenous identity and the history of colonization and its influence. Her constructed portraits are known for pushing the boundaries of traditional photography and the use of color.

Navarro has won numerous awards and grants for her mixed-media photography, among them the Artadia Fellowship, the Top Ten Lensculture Critics' Choice Award, and the HCP Beth Block Honoraria, and has been shortlisted for several more, including the Photo London Emerging Photographer of the Year Award and The Royal Photographic Society, IPE 163. Her work has been exhibited in the US and abroad. Selected shows include Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), USA; Galerija Upuluh, Zagreb, Croatia; Holocaust Museum Houston, USA; Artpace, San Antonio, USA; Melkweg Expo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Houston Center for Photography, Houston, USA; and Museo de la Reconquista, Tigre, Argentina. Navarro's work has been featured in numerous publications, including ARTnews, The Guardian, Observer, Rolling Stone Italia, and Photo Vogue Festival Italia.