"Immigration issues in the U.S. have been at the center of U.S. politics and media, especially from 2005 with the advent of the immigrant rights marches that took place then to the policy changes that happened under the newly appointed Trump administration with the executive orders on border shutdowns and prevention through deterrence. This period of activism was marked by the application of using visibility of undocumented migrants to "come out of the shadows" and liberal politics in the words of Medel, "performed fantasies of multicultural inclusion." But activism tied to racial visibility also marked a way of weaponizing this visibility in specific political policies such as SB1070 which attempted to legalize racial profiling, amongst other forms of profiling in policing. while subverting recent punitive trends in political and social policies in post-Trump, post-Covid world, while avoiding the liberal traps of body-based visibility.

"Spectral Aesthetics" uses a wide range of visual mediums such as photography and film to bring attention to the visibility and invisibility of migrants at the U.S./Mexico border in Arizona, and "considers this paradox a governing structure of recognition at the US-Mexico border and theorizes alternative forms of visibility through visual art, media, and performance projects that intervene in this double-bind." These visual projects focus in different ways on the ways that immigrant bodies are purposely absent as a meditation on how what cant be seen and the conjectures that are created around them, while subverting recent punitive trends in political and social policies in post-Trump, post-Covid world, while avoiding the liberal traps of body-based visibility"-- Provided by publisher.