Border art

Since its conception in the mid-80's, this artistic practice has assisted in the development of questions surrounding homeland, borders, surveillance, identity, race, ethnicity, and national origin(s).

Starting in 1984, and continuing in several iterations through the early twenty-first century, the binational collective transformed San Diego-Tijuana into a highly charged site for conceptual performance art ...The BAW/TAF artists were to link performance, site-specificity, and the U.S.-Mexico Border, as well as the first to export "border art" to other geographic locations and situations.

[3] Antonio Prieto argues that "As opposed to folk artists, the new generation belongs to the middle class, has formal training and self-consciously conceives itself as a producer of 'border art.'

As borders define the economy, political ideology, and national identity of countries throughout the world, so we should examine our own borderlands for an understanding of ourselves and each other.” Prieto notes that “While the first examples of Chicano art in the late sixties took up issues of land, community and oppression, it was not until later that graphic artists like Rupert García began to explicitly depict the border in their work.

García's 1973 silkscreen "¡Cesen Deportación!," for example, calls for an end to the exploitative treatment of migrant workers who are allowed to cross the border and are then deported at the whim of U.S. economic and political interests.”[3] Prieto notes that for Mexican and Chicano artists, the aesthetics of rascuache created a hybrid of Mexican and American visual culture.

Situated in the El Paso / Juarez borderlands, this interactive work utilizes large searchlights as a means for participants on either side of the border to communicate with one another.

When one beam of light interacts with another, a microphone and speaker automatically switch on allowing participants on both sides to communicate across the hardened infrastructure which divides their two countries.

The searchlight, most commonly used in applications of surveillance and apprehension of migrants by the United States Border Patrol is one of the symbols which Lozano-Hemmer subverts in his work.

In the film, Ana Teresa Fernandez hopes to “[turn] a wall that divides into the ocean and the sky that expands” into a symbol for potential future mobility.

The artist creates new meaning for the sky's natural blue color, as she uses it to symbolize a geography with open borders and freedom of movement.

Artesania & Cuidado (Craft & Care) by Tanya Aguiñiga serves as a collection of the artists work in activism, design, and documentation.

[citation needed] Another artist tackling the contentions of the United States/Mexico border is Judi Werthein, who in 2005 created a line of shoes titled, Brinco, Spanish for the word Jump.

Additionally, the shoes featured removable soles with a map of the San Diego/Tijuana border, specifically indicating favorable routes to take.

These shoes would also be sold in small boutique shops in San Diego for $215 a pair, advertised to the higher class audience as "one-of-a-kind art objects."

The route he followed was one drawn in green on a map as part of the armistice after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, indicating land under the control of the new state of Israel.

Alÿs restricted his walking to a 15-mile stretch through a divided Jerusalem, a hike that took him down streets, through yards and parks, and over rocky abandoned terrain.

She focuses on portraying the life of a displaced Palestinian woman who immigrated to the United States at an early age with her family.

[citation needed] There have been several artists from other countries who have come to the Israeli West Bank barrier and used the wall itself as a canvas to express their condemnation of its establishment.

[citation needed] The anonymous, UK-based artist, Banksy, is a prominent figure in the way individuals have used the separation wall as surface to express their dissent for its establishment.

Banksy has made other comments regarding the size and scale of the separation barrier in regards to how it essentially isolates the Palestinian population, nearly surrounding them on every side.

Many of her pieces depict women as the key figures and protagonists of their respective compositions and ultimately gives another perspective to the border art phenomenon.

[15] Her border art on the separation barrier focuses on the characteristics of scale and location, causing the viewer to comprehend the sheer size of the wall in relation to the body.

"[15] By creating this contrast in size of the viewer to her art work, it causes the individual to question the wall, bring attention to it, and consider the lengths Israel has taken to protect itself from external forces.

She continues by saying we must articulate a person not categorized by one thing but as a history of identities such as student, mother, sister, brother, teacher, craftsman, coworker, etc.

[citation needed] Another individual who also explores ideas of the human body acting as a conceptual border is Sama Alshaibi.

The intersectional is outdated due to the idea of having one central identity and branching off of it is a multitude of descriptions such as race, class, and gender.

Trinh T. Minh-ha additionally observes “boundaries not only express the desire to free/to subject one practice, one culture, one national community from/to another, but also expose the extent to which cultures are products of the continuing struggle between official and unofficial narratives–those largely circulated in favor of the State and its policies of inclusion, incorporation, and validation, as well as of exclusion, appropriation, and dispossession.”[25] Patssi Valdez touches on the idea of the border in her screenprint, "L.A./TJ."

The children of victims, survivors, witnesses, or perpetrators have different experiences of postmemory, even though they share the familial ties that facilitate intergenerational identification.

[citation needed] Artist Sama Alshaibi, considers Hirsch's conception of postmemory as "key to my life and to my art practice, which is, after all, an extension of who I am.

"[21] Born to a Palestinian mother and an Iraqi father, Alshaibi describes her upbringing as "...dominated by traumatic narratives of losing Palestine, and all along I was mourning for a place unknown to me.