Carne y Arena
This is “Carne y Arena,” a twenty-minute art and virtual reality installation by Mexican film director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, which simulates a barefoot refugee’s first-person account of making the journey through the desert from Mexico into the United States.
Through an immersive virtual reality experience, Carne y Arena, or "Flesh and Sand," tells the stories of people willing to risk their lives crossing vast oceans of sand—a mother fleeing gang violence in Central America, a young boy abandoned in the desert, a lawyer who crossed at nine years old—all in the search of better lives.
In March 2018, CARNE y ARENA was first installed in a custom-built theater inside the Trinidad Baptist Church in northeast Washington D.C.
As Iñárritu says, “My intention was to experiment with VR technology to explore the human condition in an attempt to break the dictatorship of the frame—within which things are just observed—and claim the space to allow the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants' feet, under their skin, and into their hearts.
"It’s not just, I see your pain; no, this is, I feel your pain. That’s compassion.”
The VR experience features the real, first-person accounts of immigrants and refugees who generously restaged their border crossing experiences for Iñárritu’s production.
Policy makers, members of Congress, artists, students, journalists, and so many others have experienced Carne y Arena since it launched in 2018. You could be next: Find upcoming tour dates.