Con lo Que me Queda, me Rindo / With What I Have Left, I Give Up, 2019

Collograph on hand-made flax paper

40 x 30 in.

Jonathan Herrera Soto was born in Chicago, Illinois to his undocumented parents who are originally from Iguala, Mexico and immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s. As the first US citizen in his immediate family, Jonathan grew up in what felt like an entirely different world than the one occupied by his loved ones. Jonathan's world was in-between permissibility and illegitimacy, Spanish and English, citizen and refugee.

Witnessing the injustices his family members faced as non-citizens, Jonathan began to see how their migration journey continued-how his parents had physically arrived but were not accepted-and how his own life was an extension of their journey. He began archiving the stories around him and with the support of his parents and older siblings, he applied and was accepted to attend Chicago's first public arts high school and was part of their inaugural graduating class of 2013. There he learned to render the experiences that molded him by making artwork about his family's immigration story.

Jonathan continued his education at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. As a student in service to various forms of learning, he acquired minors in creative writing, art history, and teaching. In school, he found his voice through the medium of printmaking-he learned how to construct visual material from what is lost as well as create presence out of disappearance.