What We Carry: Design, Objects, Memory and Belonging between Mexico and Chicago

Migration is often told through economics or politics, but it is also a story of objects, traditions, and the everyday practices that people carry with them. This conversation explores how Mexican migrants in Chicago preserved and transformed their cultural heritage through material culture, creating spaces of belonging far from home.
Rather than focusing solely on family heirlooms, the discussion will examine the broader role of objects, crafts, domestic rituals, and community institutions in sustaining cultural identity. By placing the experiences of Mexican migrants alongside the project of modernization unfolding in Mexico during the twentieth century, the panel asks how migration reshaped material culture on both sides of the border.
Join Edith Farnsworth House and the Chicago History Museum in highlighting their two exhibitions, Fertile Ground and Aqui en Chicago, with this incredible conversation between Ana Elena Mallet, Joel Aguliar, and Jojo Galván, moderated by Iker Gil of Mas Context. A reception with refreshments will follow in the CHM café.