The Ache for Home | Selma Fernandez Richter

The exhibition will be on display November 18 through December 14, 2024 in the Joseph Gazzuolo Gallery in the Fine Arts Center (FAC 135). Community are invited to a reception on Thursday, December 5, 12-1 p.m.

About the Artist:
Selma Fernández Richter is a Mexican visual artist based in Minneapolis. For her project titled "The Ache for Home", she focuses her camera on refugee communities of the Twin Cities. As the witness to the building of new lives, she photographs individuals and families, creating portraits of recent immigrants from Burma, Bhutan, Eritrea, and Somalia.

She is the recipient of several grants and awards including the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship and two Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants. She has exhibited at venues such as Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Nuevo Leon Center for the Arts in Monterrey, Mexico. A selection of her photographs was featured in the exhibition and book Women behind the lens: 100 years of photographic creation in Mexico, 1910-2010.

Artist Statement:
The Ache for Home is a photographic meditation on displacement, belonging, and adaptation. Over five years I photographed refugees from Burma, Bhutan, and Somalia who resettled in Minnesota after fleeing their home countries due to violence and persecution. These families had just arrived and we formed a relationship based on our shared experience, for I too left my home in Mexico, seeking safety and a new life.

This project is a personal reflection on what it means to build a life in a new country and explores the process of making a home as well as the longing for connection and community. The Ache for Home speaks to the universal pursuit of seeking a place to call your own, and the quiet resilience woven into the immigrant experience. 

Gallery Hours:
Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m.
Saturday, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

Image:
Left - Horse, Saint Paul, MN. 2012.   
Right - Planet Hook beneath the flag of the Karen State, Saint Paul, MN. 2012.