As immersive as Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s border-crossing virtual-reality installation CARNE Y ARENA is, the deeper experience may be what follows: an exit corridor of immigrant portraits, where refugees tell their stories—one by one—in their own words.

“During the past four years in which this project has been growing in my mind, I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing many Mexican and Central American refugees. Their life stories haunted me, so I invited some of them to collaborate with me in the project. My intention was to experiment with VR technology to explore the human condition in an attempt to break the dictatorship of the frame, within which things are just observed, and claim the space to allow the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants’ feet, under their skin, and into their hearts.” — Alejandro G. Iñárritu

CARNE Y ARENA, ongoing.

LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

TLATELOLCO MUSEUM, Mexico City.

lacma.org/carne-y-arena#landing

Also see: nytimes.com/2017/05/17/arts/design/alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu-carne-y-arena-virtual-reality-cannes.html

Visitor inside the Carne y arena installation at the Cannes Film Festival, May 2017. Photograph by Emmanuel Lubezki, longtime cinematographer for Iñárritu, Terrence Malick, and Alfonso Cuaron,