Brenda Perry Herrera

America in Distress

Employing the festive visual language of Mexican papel picado, this series satirically transforms the American flag upside down into a fragile, inverted symbol of national distress. Drawing and cutting operate as communal labor, using celebration as satire to confront the violence embedded in immigration policy, surveillance, and contested ideas of national belonging.

Lies Become Truth

Rendered in black papel picado, the work contrasts the festive Mexican tradition with the dark mechanics of propaganda—repetition, manufactured truth, and the targeting of specific groups within a society.