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Border doors created by Sandia Prep advanced Spanish-language students over the years will be featured in a new exhibit.

The Border Doors exhibit opens on Thursday, August 14, at the Mexican Consulate of Albuquerque with a tour and roundtable discussion from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. The same doors featured for nearly a year at the Albuquerque Museum will be on display, along with 12 new doors created by students who graduated last spring.

The event will be in Spanish, and Sandia Prep Modern Languages Department Chair Claudio Pérez and Prep alum OIivia Chavez ’25 will be part of the roundtable, moderated by head consul Patricia Pinzón.

The event is sponsored by the Albuquerque Mexican Consulate and the Latin American and Iberian Institute.

Since 2014, Pérez has taken his advanced Spanish-language students to El Paso, Texas, where they use their Spanish skills to interact first-hand with immigrants and advocates at the Cristo Rey Border Immersion Program.

Upon their return to Albuquerque, students illustrate a series of doors containing colorful and powerful imagery that tells the stories of the people they met and reflect on major themes of immigration at the border.

At the exhibit’s opening, Perez will share his Border Door project’s inspiration and offer background on migration. Participants can reflect on the immigrant experience and explore how art can be a powerful tool for storytelling and change. They also will tour the exhibit and reflect on the human stories behind immigration.

The opening is free and open to the public. To RSVP,  scan the QR code on the flyer below. The consulate is at 1610 Fourth St. NW.

Last fall, the Albuquerque Museum hosted an exhibition of students’ border doors created between 2019 and 2024. The exhibit contemplated the symbolic door -- unlike a physical border wall or fence -- as it related to the immigrant experience. The exhibition wrapped up in May.

Pérez has taught at Prep since 2002.