Delilah Montoya at Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Three of Delilah Montoya’s photographs from the Trail of Thirst series are currently on exhibit at LACMA’s Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement exhibition, running through September 1, 2008.

In addition, Montoya has been featured in the Los Angeles Times. Go here to download this article.

The Trail of Thirst is a gallery installation by Delilah Montoya comprised of images of the barren, arid desert. Photos are aligned in a 360 degree presentation encompassing the viewer. The crisp, incisive digital technique shows vast, people-less landscapes filled with only the odd “sound” of wind, the “feel” of intense heat, tumbleweeds and the debris of persons who may well have died trying to make their way across. Therein lies the show title “Sed,” which means “thirst” in Spanish. By showing us the pack backs, the parched and discarded water jugs, Montoya addresses the plight of migrant workers literally risking their life just to work. The “in the round” installation format puts you into the pictorial environment in ways the framed and glossy shot cannot. Saying much with very little, Montoya enters the current immigration debates, not as an ideologue but as a maker of very fine and haunting images. The truth is that we are often brought to ethical questions via beauty; that is certainly the case here