Citizens of the World

This piece was developed to honor immigrant parents all over the world and to imagine a world in which nation states did not exist - a world in which all human beings were citizens of planet Earth. The child figure was based on a photograph I took at one of my butterfly workshops in Santa Ana, California earlier that year where a boy was happily focused on painting a set of butterfly wings. A migrant mother sits alongside her son with dignity, love and patience. She can also be a school teacher working with her pupil, or an older sister with her younger sibling.

The year when this work was created, I saw the film Elysium, based on a story in which the ultrarich lived aboard a luxurious space station called Elysium, while the rest of humanity lived a harsh existence in Earth's ruins. I was inspired to create...