Monarch photograph by Olivia BarrionuevoTHE MONARCH PROJECT
Monarch butterfly illuminated against a dark background

A traveling immersive installation by Olivia Barrionuevo

Within theMonarch
Project.

Resilience:
intimate and collective.

Enter the project 01
Migration. Transformation. Belonging.Resiliencia íntima y colectiva
01 / THE PROJECTART AS A PLACE OF CONNECTION

Every journey
leaves a trace.

Bring the Monarch to Your Institution

Silk monarchs in flight, more than 500 portraits of immigrants, and the voices of everyone who steps inside. A work about migration, transformation, and the courage to begin again.

A butterfly crosses borders. A person begins again.

Each year, the monarch makes a journey too long for any single life to finish. It's fragile, it's far, and it keeps going anyway. That journey is the heart of this work.

The installation brings together immersive space, portraiture and the stories of the people who walk through it. It connects the private experience of change with a shared search for belonging: what it takes to move through uncertainty, and what grows on the other side of it.

The work changes as it moves. At every stop, new faces and stories join the archive, building a larger conversation about what we carry, what we leave behind, and how we begin again.

02 / THE EXPERIENCEA SPACE TO ENTER, A STORY TO CARRY

One project.
Many crossings.

Explore the three connected strands of the work.

Monarch installation with suspended silk butterflies above a hospital bed

Currently showing at Hospital of Emotions, Los Angeles

IIMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

The Installation

To inhabit an emotion.

The Monarch butterflies gives physical form to hope and resilience as hundreds of silk monarchs are suspended in flight, turning a room into a place of stillness and reflection. Each venue's architecture becomes part of the work. At Hospital of Emotions, it lives in a patient room, where a hospital bed becomes a place to reflect on the fragile moments when something inside us changes.

Space · vulnerability · renewal
Portrait of a woman surrounded by monarch butterflies
IIPHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT

La Mariposa Monarca

More than 500 faces. More than 500 journeys.

An ongoing portrait series of immigrants, photographed by Barrionuevo. It's about the people behind the word "migration": their presence, their dignity, their traveled road. Selected portraits enter the installation, bringing individual journeys into the collective experience.

Portraiture · identity · human connection
A collage of participant portraits with monarch butterflies
IIIPARTICIPANT STORIES

The Living Archive

The work continues with you.

Portrait sessions and an evolving wall of images and stories allow the project to grow through participation. Traveling from city to city, the archive holds different experiences of movement, reinvention, and belonging.

Encounter · memory · collective resilience

THE MONARCH AS METAPHOR

What does it mean
to leave?
What does it take
to begin again?

Migration is movement.
Transformation is what happens within.

03 / ARTISTOLIVIA BARRIONUEVO
Olivia Barrionuevo standing among suspended monarch butterflies

Olivia Barrionuevo

Olivia grew up in a border town, living in Mexico while going to school in the United States. Crossing a border was part of her everyday life long before it became the heart of her work. Rooted in two cultures, she learned to hold both, and that double vision runs through everything she creates.

She studied at the University of Guadalajara, continued her studies across Europe, and completed her degree at ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles. Today, her photography explores subcultures and historical traditions to spark honest conversations across cultural boundaries. Los Angeles, with its rich tapestry of cultures, is her home.

Her work has been recognized and exhibited by the Museum of Tolerance, the Lucie Foundation, the Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles, the University of Sonora, the Neutra Institute Museum and Gallery, El Ahuehuete in Mexico City, and international spaces in Basel, Switzerland, among others.

THE ARTISTIC INQUIRYBARRIONUEVO

We carry the
capacity for
renewal.

Monarch Project considers resilience as both a private experience and a shared human condition.

Barrionuevo's project uses the monarch butterfly as a metaphor for migration, hope, and transformation. Personal journeys and collective encounters sit alongside one another, inviting reflection on identity, endings, and reinvention.

The work asks how art can create a space for these experiences to be seen, felt, and held together.

04 / EXHIBITIONS & COLLABORATIONSFOR MUSEUMS & CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS

A journey that
finds its next home.

A traveling installation and living archive for museums, galleries, universities, and cultural spaces.

oliviabarrionuevo.art@gmail.com

The project offers a meeting point between an artistic experience and the communities who encounter it. Installation, photographic presentation, and participant stories can be considered together in conversation with the host institution.

Download project overview
Explore a hosting conversation

Begin with the exhibition context, available space, intended audience, and opportunities for local participation. Installation requirements, timing, image selection, and the scope of portrait sessions should be developed directly with the project team.