Bringing the migrant crisis home, one impossible monument at a time

Last Saturday’s biological weapons attack in Syria set off yet another wave of involuntary migration. Lebanese-American artist Mary Ann Peters says that this water-based lingo isn’t an accident.

When we speak of a flood, or deluge, or tsunami of refugees at our border, it turns people from individuals into a threat. Her work explores a crisis to which many of us have become numb, after years of news reports and corrosive political rhetoric. With her paintings and installations, Peters makes it impossible to look away.