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The Good Neighbor

2019

Digital C-Type Prints

Series of 4 Photographs

Photographed in collaboration with Sophie Barbasch

The Good Neighbor is a photographic performance series that was created as a response to a signpost that Garcia encountered, during her residency at The Studios at MASS MoCA. Erect, on a handful of front yards in North Adams, Massachusetts, the sign in full read, “No matter where you are from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor,” in three languages - Spanish, English and Arabic.

With an understanding that this message had been embraced as one that is undoubtedly of tolerance and welcome, and further, a gesture to promote community and hospitality across the country, it’s presence amongst streets lined with American flags heightened a concern for an incongruity with the core values and immigration policies of the current administration in power.

The Good Neighbor is concerned with foreignity. It explores otherness by accentuating, alienating, and displacing a figure that is strange to a somewhat familiar backdrop off of highway U.S. Route 1.


Exhibition History: Montclair State University Galleries (2023); Ford Foundation Live Gallery at New York Live Arts; Pintô International (2022); Monash Gallery (2019)