Integration of people in multiple societies, immigrant displacement, trauma of the oppressed man and confusion of today’s contemporary, rapid-paced lifestyle were some themes for Thursday’s fall opener at the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG).

The opening reception featured artists Victor Vazquez, Luis Cruz Azaceta and Burt Barr.

Vazquez, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, has an extensive resume including doctoral coursework in education and comparative religions. His earlier works dealt with syncretism, but the current series has evolved into a discussion on displacement, the phenomenon of people relocating and the integration of new and better ways of living.

“It has to do with dealing with the experience of the encountered,” said Vazquez, commenting on his current series, “Dislocation, Encounter, Displacement.”

In Vazquez’s color photograph piece titled “Migration,” 12 panels made up an image composed of chalked arrows and scattered white cubes, representing human bodies.

“It’s a piece which instead of using real people, I used objects,” said Vazquez.

According to Vazquez, the viewer is to perceive these objects as individuals who are isolated by “self borders” and who are encountered regardless of their culture or society.

Both Vazquez and Azaceta are immigrants that express similar themes, but use different materials within mixed media. Azaceta’s art transports his viewer into a world of chaos. For example, he includes towers garnished with stuffed bears and childrens’ toys trapped in the confines of wood construction. Crafted and connected boards evaded the gallery space. Azaceta’s floor installations and his wall pieces involved protruding chairs, drainage pipes and decorated bottles.

Azaceta says he uses art to express isolation of the oppressed man, the human condition and his own experience as a Cuban immigrant in the 60s.

“Well I’m a Cuban in exile living in this country for 50 years without ever going back to my own country,” said Azaceta. “As an immigrant, I went directly from Atlanta to New York and it was an experience. I felt so insignificant living in New York for those first few years…art gave me a tool to become a voice, to integrate into the American society.”

Azaceta said that he and Vazquez are privileged to be voices for immigrants who, like themselves, reflect on their experiences of the “border,” a term that Vazquez defines as the self-inflicted distance from new and sometimes traumatic experiences.

Vazquez and Azaceta acknowledge that sometimes relocation of the oppressed can have consequences.

“N.O. Neighborhoods,” a mixed media floor piece engineered with boards, plastic and photographs exemplifies Azaceta’s ideology of displacement, homelessness and confusion due to natural disasters.

“It was my second time in exile,” said Azaceta. “We were treated like refugees in our own country.”

Sculpture instructor Jeff Mickey reflected on his own experiences after Katrina in order to better understand Azaceta’s floor piece, “N.O. Neighborhoods.”

“What I respond to is that it is very much like a map,” said Mickey. “It becomes a terrain that we navigate. It’s demarcated in ways much like city blocks are. So each one of those little representational areas is like a neighborhood; I can respond to it in that way.” Mickey also addressed the power of materials, stating the refurbished boards allocate the disaster theme.

For information on upcoming gallery events, contact Dale Newkirk, gallery director of CAG,  via his email at [email protected].