2022 marks the 20th anniversary of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. For the past 20 years, CIRC has served as a unified statewide voice and movement to defend and advance immigrant justice. CIRC has passed countless bills, increased our membership, and led numerous organized actions.
Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC)
20th Anniversary Artwork Statement
Artist: Eriko Tsogo
Artwork Title: “We Never Needed Nations to be Human”
Medium: Ink on paper
Year: 2022
In We Never Needed Nations to be Human, a figure is birthing out of a cocoon and growing into a tree depicting. The visual depicts a futurized half human / half tree hybrid universal figure of blended diversities. The figure stands in the center, gazing upwards into the future horizon. The tree symbolizes resilience and regrowth, commemorating our ancestors and the immigrant warriors who came before us while also a call for action for the future generations.
The figure is wearing a crown. Their hair becomes the sun rays, reaching for new heights. The tree of life represents grit, survivalism and endurance. The artwork utilizes cultural motifs and ominous symbols of nature. As the tree progresses down, it transforms from an analog world into a pixelated digital universe representing the age of our future immigrant youth heroes.
We Never Needed Nations to be Human celebrates the rooting, assimilation, oneness, evolution, and ascension of the immigrant culture in America. The artwork depicts the perpetual re-growth, re-generation, adaptation, resilience, and strength of our immigrant community through time, space, and change – in belonging, finding the meaning of home, establishing ownership and self-agency.
The artwork explores themes of the American dream, freedom, immigrant pride, cultural pride, peace, unity, future, hope, resilience, and new beginnings. We Never Needed Nations to be Human seeks to expand perspectives to create stronger, more inclusive, connected, and united communities.
Brainstorm sketches:
hilitehead 
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