Alejandra Cuadra Sanchez, who was born in Peru and immigrated to Orleans when she was eight, makes multimedia art that is as much an exploration of identity and self as it is an interpretation of the wrenching effects of U.S. immigration policy. Cuadra’s show “Longing for Belonging” is on display in the Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College in West Barnstable through Oct. 28.

A graduate of Nauset Regional High School, Cuadra graduated from 4Cs in 2016 and earned a B.F.A. in sculpture with a minor in public engagement from the Maine College of Art in 2020. She splits her time now between Cape Cod and Medford, where she’ll move full-time next month.

Though primarily a ceramicist, Cuadra incorporates a variety of media in her work. “I don’t want to limit how I speak to just one medium,” she says. Her materials include bamboo, sliced and warped aluminum cans, audio recordings, bent wire, textiles, video footage, clay, phragmites, wax shaped by alginate molds, steel, bronze, cast aluminum, photos, and clothes that Cuadra has dipped in plaster and spray-painted. All bear on national identity in distinct ways.

“Longing for Belonging” has a cohesive message: Cuadra explores what it means to build roots and home. Esperanza, Sol, Milagro (“Hope, Sun, Miracle”) is a three-statue series of high-fired stoneware clay inspired by an Incan myth about the descendants of the sun god, Inti. Cuadra wove in monarch butterflies — migrating creatures that also symbolize freedom — and placed each of the statues in dirt, which is swept neatly into a pile in the gallery. “It’s about finding roots,” says Cuadra. “I like to be grounded.”

Cuadra is a participant in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which “created breathing room” for her to be in the United States (though she is required to pay $495 every two years to the federal government to renew her legal status). One of the most striking elements of the show is a wall in the gallery tessellated with copies of Cuadra’s DACA refiling paperwork. On this background of bureaucratic red tape, Cuadra hung photographs of herself in which she is wrapped in an enlarged fabric print of her employment authorization document, which she receives every two years through DACA. She points out the card’s expiration date. “It’s a document that defines my freedoms here,” says Cuadra. “I want to redefine my freedom.”

As a part of this redefinition, Cuadra carefully navigates and portrays her multinational identity. “It’s an interesting dance as an immigrant, because I feel very fortunate to be here, but also I’m speaking out against certain laws,” she says. “I grew up here, I learned a lot of different histories, and it’s not right. But how much can I say? It’s a dance back and forth.”

Uncertainty is at the crux of Cuadra’s work. A piece called Packed Allegories sits in the corner of the gallery: a wooden suitcase propped open and filled with notes, small clay works, and photos. An audio recording — which includes bilingual speech and the sounds of a beating heart and a ticking clock — accompanies the visual.

“I wanted to create a space where one could meditate with the uncertainty of displacement and migration policies,” Cuadra writes in her accompanying statement. The piece was a reaction to a phrase she grew up repeating to herself: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It is also meant to question words like illegal and alien, which are used often in the debates on immigration. Cuadra was inspired to make this piece after engaging with other DACA recipients, which relieved the burden she’d felt before — of being alone.

Cuadra finds inspiration in many places. Her teachers, she says, have “pushed me in ways I never thought possible,” and she received technological help in putting together the show from her peers.

Cuadra is also inspired by literature and says the work of cultural theorist bell hooks was critical to her development as an artist. Her work frequently explores the role of place in belonging, and it is also key to her technique. At 4Cs, Cuadra took a sculpture class where everyone started their work with empty space: “It was the only medium we all had in common,” she says.

Cuadra recently returned from a residency at the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation in Rockland, Maine. Though she tends to start with writing and taking notes, Cuadra says that her process as an artist has been changing, and she has been motivated by the variety of people and landscapes that surround her in different places.

These days, Cuadra says she’s focusing on letting her inner child be free. “I’m exploring and playing,” she says. “I’m not a painter, but I’m painting. I’m still figuring out what it means to be an artist and a human.”

Longing for Belonging

The event: Work by Alejandra Cuadra Sanchez
The time: Through Oct. 28
The place: Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College, 2240 Iyannough Road, West Barnstable
The cost: Free