Mateo Nava maps out sensations, memories, and intangible experiences of migration through the creation of large, layered cut-out paintings that use the body and plants to express the alienation bodies, land, and spirits endure.

Beads, plastic gems, fragments of printed fabric, and sewing notions are layered and layered on the surface of the paintings. Nava intertwines the imagery of blood vessels, roots and vines, and nets and tributaries as symbols of bloodlines and history. 

Mangrove roots provide protection to fish just like our homes do for us, the pierced poppy bulb seeps out droplets of opium extract, a concise metaphor for the blood and tears shed over the drug trade, and the companion plants of corn, beans, and squash not only lay the framework for the staple diets of Mesoamericans but also lay the framework for their cosmogony. 

Violent lines such as chain links, barbed wires, thorns, nets, and imaginary state borders also appear in the works entangled among body parts and flora. In every work a body shows up and to Nava it represents a “body-place”. To him the body does not inhabit a place as much as a place inhabits the body and thus the dismembered body-place manifests as a symbol for the land; they are found continuously floating through the works. These disembodied parts interact with one another, moving in a flow, praying or seeking shelter.