Written By Emma Oslé
Migration, forced dislocation, and issues of diaspora are no strange concepts to Latinx communities in the United States. Through the lenses of loss, reclamation, and preservation, Muriel Hasbun’s current exhibition (at Rutgers University), Muriel Hasbun: Seismic Traces, speaks to these broad histories to connect her imagery and her viewership on an intimate level. Her sense of self as a Central American migrant exiled to the United States by the Salvadoran civil war, permeates the work and makes her personal diasporic experience palpable to the viewer. Her photographs and installations give her viewers a sense of both personal and collective memory, exile, and generational traumas.