As a first-generation immigrant from Mexico, Ivan Montoya uses motifs from the natural world and Mesoamerican folklore to visually represent his experience of existing between cultures. Bold color, dynamic lighting, and old world motifs provide him with the visual language required to turn allegorical figures into representations of immigrants and their experiences. His works explore how cultural heritage intersects with external pressures of assimilation, the resulting spark of identity that comes from this friction, and what happens when people are forced to change. In the works included in this exhibition, Montoya paints scenes of figures engaging in rest and relaxation in a distinctly Mexican-American manner. The artist places his working-class figures in natural settings, but they do not engage with their environment, and the natural landscape becomes a superficial backdrop to their daily lives. Such scenes evoke a sense of dissociation between individual and location, which serves as a metaphor for the ethereal liminal space experienced by those who are torn between two cultures.