Joel Hernandez, Soledad.Born in a Mexican border town, artist Joel Hernandez, who is now Houston-based, moved to Indiana when he was 9.

"My memories soon faded because I was more worried about fitting into a new culture than (about trying) to establish my identity," he writes.

After realizing being an immigrant made him different from the children around him, "I started to learn about my culture through television and word of mouth and through my peers who also had a vague idea of what Mexico was."

The found-object assemblage and eight staged — often funny or surreal — photographs on view in Mexicanos, his first solo show, represent the Mexico he’s pieced together from those diffuse sources.

It will probably take a larger selection of pictures to see where Hernandez is going with the series, but the most interesting photos here are the ones of people who could be playing characters in a soap opera, as in the image of a flamboyantly grief-stricken fop or the photo of a teenage girl with a creepy looking infant simulator doll.

Mexicanos continues through Sept. 24 at the Lawndale Art Center.