In Atlanta, you can’t tailgate a football or soccer game at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium without laying eyes on the mural of five immigrants painted by artist, Yehimi Cambrón Álvarez.
The Mexican-born artist, activist and public speaker is a monument-maker of immigrants in the South. While Stone Mountain, the largest Confederate monument in the country, sits in her backyard, her work is inspired by stories of immigrants that might be ignored otherwise, particularly in this part of the country.
Cambrón’s mural “Monuments: Atlanta’s Immigrants” is one of her biggest and is visible to the thousands of people visiting Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the adjacent community-gathering, the Home Depot Backyard. On a turquoise base, grounded on cactus and desert flowers and surrounded by monarch butterflies — a symbol of global migration — five individuals from diverse backgrounds and life paths tell a story of inclusion and representation.
From far away, you see their colors and facial expressions. If you look closely enough, you see particular lines on each representing Cambrón’s level of intention and detail. “Like a fingerprint, the lines within each portrait are unique to the individual, reflecting a sense of intimacy and the complexity of each person’s story,” she says.
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“The biggest surprise for people to hear is that these individuals are actual people from Atlanta’s communities,” says Shawn Watwood, a friend of Cambrón in the art space and senior manager for corporate sales and partnerships at the Home Depot Backyard. Watwood joined the Home Depot Backyard team after the mural’s completion, but as soon as he arrived at the company, he felt compelled to reach out to Cambrón to meet her and offer his help. It was then that their friendship evolved.
Luis Aceves-Amaya is one of the immigrants featured in the mural. “It felt validating,” says Aceves-Amaya, a Mexican artist. “[It] reminded me we aren’t as alone as we can sometimes feel.” Aceves-Amaya immigrated to Georgia at age 8 with his family from Michoacan, Mexico — the same birthplace as Cambrón. His legal status didn’t allow him to seek financial help to attend college, and covering tuition out of pocket was out of the question, so he became a self-taught photographer and stylist. Aceves-Amaya met Cambrón over social media and their connection through art was immediate.
One in every 10 people in Georgia is an immigrant, and 7% of the population in the state is native-born American with at least one immigrant parent, according to the American Immigration Council. Immigrants are an essential part of the community in Georgia, culturally and economically.
And Cambrón is one of those immigrants.
The Red Pears hail from El Monte, where memories of backyard parties shaped their community and where music formed part of their identities.
When she was 7, Cambrón and her family left Michoacan, Mexico to start a new life on Buford Highway, one of the most diverse communities in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Her experience as an immigrant in a state with a long history of racism shaped her career as an artist.
Cambrón’s work goes beyond walls and canvas. As a public speaker, she shares her experience as an immigrant and brings awareness to the importance of humanizing the stories of undocumented immigrants. One of her latest public speaking engagements was Night of Ideas Atlanta 2023, an event by Villa Albertine, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and the Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs.
“Very early in her life, Yehimi realized that she had a role that very few of us have or want to have because it is difficult to be the spokesperson for people who have been forced to live a marginalized life,” says Dr. Rafael Ocasio, professor at Agnes Scott College — Cambrón’s alma matter. “When she realized what it meant to be undocumented, Yehimi took ownership of that identity, and it has been the driving force behind everything: how she sees life, how she sees art, how she makes art and how she places herself within our Latino community.”
“It has been a fight to get to do the work in Georgia, to do the work in the South,” says Cambrón. “I hope that the work that we are doing today makes it so that the next generation doesn’t have to leave [Georgia] to thrive.”
But, after years of brightening up the streets, filling up museum walls and gracing stages across the nation with her message, she is about to become part of the small 8 percent of Latinas in the U.S. with a master’s degree.
“We’re demanding the respect that we deserve for really being the backbone of the restaurant industry in this country.”
In a new apartment filled with moving boxes, located just one train stop away from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Cambrón unpacks a new chapter in her career. She has been selected to receive the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. In the fall, she is attending SAIC to pursue a master of fine arts.
“I’m at a moment where I feel like I’ve kind of hit a wall with a public art,” says Cambrón. “I’m deep down dying to create work that gives a little more nuance and provides a little more substance, layers and complexity, and kind of disrupts the singular narrative of people who are immigrants.”
Before leaving the city, Cambrón got her first Atlanta solo exhibit at the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, “Documenting the Undocumented in the South.” Sophia Sobrino, a rising senior college student and artist who is inspired by Cambrón’s work, got the opportunity to meet the artist and work alongside her as a curatorial and studio assistant. “It was life-changing for me as an artist. I can’t walk away unchanged,” says Sobrino.
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Cambrón’s exhibit is live until the end of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15). It features some pieces of art reimagined, such as“Family Portraits,” which went from being set on wood panels at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta a few years back to now being printed in sheer fabric hanging freely from the ceiling. We see her mother, whom she has featured before, but this time in bold, darker and gold tones, giving her a royal air. And we see the monarch butterflies she has symbolically carried throughout her work but in distinctive darker tones.
The colors, elements and multiple disciplines showcased feel like a peek into what Cambrón wants to show us “unapologetically from my heart,” as she said. It foreshadows what will come nationwide as she develops and grows as an artist.
However, one thing will remain the same: her promise to “inscribe the voices of undocumented people so that they are visible in American history.”
Daniela Cintron is a Mexican-born bilingual journalist whose work focuses on telling the stories of underrepresented communities. She is based in Atlanta and pursuing a master’s degree at Harvard. @danicintron
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