May Artist Jean Kigel -"Displacement: Immigrant Portraits"

The Bremen Library is pleased to host the traveling show “Displacement: Immigrant Portraits” by Jean Kigel throughout the month of May. If you haven’t seen it yet, this is your chance to view the exhibit that has been circulating in midcoast venues for the past several months. It is a timely show for all citizens, because immigration has been a human condition since the beginning of history. The portraits in this show depict the suffering and the terror that push a person to leave one’s home and come to the United States. Kigel has painted watercolor portraits of men, women, and children, uprooted by war, famine, persecution, national disaster, climate change, corrupt regime, and economic collapse. She accompanies each portrait with a short statement about their background. Kigel says, “I want the public to acknowledge the immigrant characters who make up a large part of this country’s labor force, and its intellectual leadership.”

In 2025 the foreign-born population in the United States marked a record high of approximately 15% of the total population. Unauthorized immigrants make up approximately 4% of the total U.S. population. Many foreign-born immigrants have been here at least twenty years, and are homeowners. Notably , immigrants provide twenty four percent of STEM workers (science, technology, engineering, math). Sixteen percent of nurses in the U.S. are foreign born, as are 28% percent of health aides, crucial to an aging America. Farming, food processing, construction, and day labor are also indebted to immigrants.

Kigel resides in Waldoboro with her husband at her studio-home and gallery. She specializes in Asian brush painting, watercolors and oils. Her work has been exhibited in SoHo, New York; Newburyport, Massachusetts; Amman Jordan; Paris, France; as well as locally in Maine. She is a member of the Union of Maine Visual Artists, among other art groups.

Visit the artist’s website at https://jeankigel.com/2024-exhibitions/displacement-immigrant-portraits/