It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
The briefest immersion in current events—“the news”—makes it impossible to deny that migration is the most pressing issue of modern times. Migration touches every other vital topic: Economy, Culture, Politics, Religion. This would hardly surprise W.C. Williams, immortal imagist poet and product of a multicultural family. Here’s what might, however, surprise him: how easy it is, in 2025, “to get the news from poems”—to tap into art’s power to convey the immigrant experience. It’s as simple as pausing to contemplate the work of multimedia artist J. Oscar Molina.
Molina emigrated to the United States at age 16, in 1989, toward the end of his native El Salvador’s devastating 12-year civil war. His body of work challenges preconception and prejudice by capturing the migrant experience from a uniquely personal POV. Molina’s final destination—Long Island, New York—differed dramatically from the place he’d left behind: winter was a revelation for the young artist. “When we arrived here, I was amazed to see how nature was transformed—at first I thought something bad had happened, the tall trees had no leaves, everything looked dead. We came from a place where temperatures average between 85 and 95, so it was shocking to see the vegetation go brown. The first snow I encountered was 36 inches high. I was outside with my brothers, shoveling—and sculpting with snow.”
Abstracted human figures—lean and sinewy from miles of travel—populate the artist’s canvases and sculpture installations, proudly representing the spirit of people on the move, always looking up and ahead as they boldly undertake the journey of a lifetime. In the paintings, described in a palette of vibrant acrylic color, the marching figures appear to multiply before our eyes, pulsing with energetic forward motion. The sculptures, on the other hand, embody a singular stability. Pure white, as if bleached by long hours in the sun, they depict the same nomadic spirits having taken root, becoming architectural milestones.
Each sculpture figure—as sparkling as that first snowfall experienced by the artist when he arrived on Long Island—is an elongated cone, some as tall as 15 feet. Their “ghostly” snow-white quality represents “that part that is pure in ourselves as humans; what keeps us connected.” Distant descendants of Giacometti, the cones are topped by abstracted human heads, not unlike gargoyles on a medieval cathedral, or echoes of megafauna specimens from one of El Salvador’s famed archaeological sites. Viewed from afar, Molina’s silhouetted figures resemble a staple of sacred architecture: a spire on a church.
A spire… aspire… it’s what unites all migrants: the hope of a better life, the “yearning to be free.” Molina’s spire people certainly have aspirations, and they also exalt every location where they stand on display, affirming their right to be exactly where they are. Those who persist in believing that migrants bring nothing, only take up resources, might be profoundly moved to see these undefeated, indefatigable figures, reminders that the migratory spirit brings a great wealth to its adoptive homeland. Asylees from other lands don’t come just to take; they come bearing gifts, the most precious being their strong work ethic and unbreakable dream of a better life—“a dream we’ve come to share,” in the words of “America,” Neil Diamond’s hymn to immigration.
Like his fellow travelers, Oscar Molina has much to share, and he does so with admirable generosity. His first gallery in Southampton, NY, Oscar Molina Gallery, was more than a showcase for his own work; it was a beautiful gesture of community and connoisseurship, a space to champion his creative colleagues, providing an elegant exhibition venue for their work. A master contractor as well as a fine artist, Molina designed and built the gallery himself; later, he merged his signature space with Yubal Márquez’s Arte Collective at 50 Jobs Lane, Southampton, where it stands today, delighting art lovers on the East End.
“My work can be interpreted in many different ways,” Molina says of his repertoire, comprising 1,300+ paintings and sculptures. “I like to leave it open to the beauty of each one of us. We all have a moment in our lives when we connect with art; listening to people who come to see my work, at my studio or in the gallery, I hear their stories about how they connect with the pieces, and that’s the beauty of it: I think it can connect with you on a spiritual level, the journey away from any corner of the world to a different country, a new home. My sculptures have a very distinctive expression,” the artist explains. “Most are always looking up. I believe these are the hopes of each one of us, the resilient part: no matter how difficult times become, we can always look to the sky and connect with the divine.” G&S
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