Living in Sanctuary, presented at BAXTER ST at the Camera Club of New York, brings together a powerful body of work by artist and researcher Cinthya Santos Briones examining the lives of undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers living within faith-based sanctuary spaces across the United States. On view from June 17 through August 12, 2026, the exhibition reflects nearly a decade of close collaboration with communities shaped by immigration policy, displacement, and collective resistance.
Briones began the project in 2017 amid intensified deportation policies and family separations during the first Trump administration. Rather than focusing solely on political rhetoric or moments of crisis, her photographs attend to the quieter realities of everyday life unfolding inside churches and temples that opened their doors to vulnerable families and individuals. The resulting images depict spaces where waiting becomes a defining condition. Meals are prepared, children play, laundry accumulates, prayers continue, and ordinary routines persist despite legal uncertainty and prolonged confinement.
The exhibition highlights the transformation of religious architecture into domestic space. Sanctuaries designed for worship become improvised homes filled with mattresses, clothing, personal photographs, and makeshift kitchens. Briones carefully observes the tension between sacred and practical functions, revealing environments where spiritual refuge intersects with political necessity. Her photographs avoid sensationalism, instead emphasizing dignity, resilience, and communal care.
Born in Mexico and of Nahua Indigenous heritage, Briones approaches documentary photography through an interdisciplinary practice informed by anthropology, archival research, and decolonial feminist thought. Before relocating to the United States, she spent more than a decade working with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, researching Indigenous migration, textiles, and traditional knowledge systems. These foundations shape her attentive, collaborative approach to image-making, where photography functions not only as documentation but also as an act of witnessing and solidarity.
Briones’s connection to sanctuary movements is also deeply personal. Her husband, Lutheran Reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz, helped co-found the New Sanctuary Movement in New York, placing the artist in close proximity to many of the communities represented in the work. This intimacy gives the exhibition a rare emotional depth, balancing political urgency with profound human tenderness.
Living in Sanctuary ultimately examines sanctuary as more than temporary protection. Through images grounded in care, endurance, and collective support, the exhibition considers how communities create spaces of survival within systems increasingly defined by exclusion and precarity.
Image:
© Cinthya Santos Briones