Every person of color has a refuge where they seek respite from the energetic drain of micro and macro aggression. Refugio is an ongoing series of portraits that explore the spaces where people of color find peace and a sense of safety. For some, this could be outdoors in nature; for others, it could be the arms of their lover.  The catalyst for Refugio was a recent conversation that I had with my father, an academic and civil rights activist. When I was three years old, he moved us from the United States to the prairies of Canada for a post-doctoral position at the University of Alberta. In reality, he had wanted to leave the United States for years. For many people of color, America is representative of a “freedom” that they have never experienced, one in which simply holding space, and being allowed to exist in peace, is an unattainable dream.  My parents divorced a few years after we moved, and my father took a job 2500 miles away in Mexico City. His decision to go so far confused me in ways that I have been trying to understand for a long time. Over the years, I have often asked him why he had made such a drastic decision. His answers never quite made sense to me. In our last conversation about this, I finally understood when he told me that, “. . .as a person of color, Mexico was the only place I had ever been where I felt comfortable in my skin. It was a place where I felt safe.”