Art
Sep 13, 2017 2:48PM
Beyond artists who look directly at the border in their work, artisans who make crafts in the borderlands are also represented. L.A.-born artist Pilar Agüero-Esparza, who presents Mexican huarache sandals in the shape of swimming flippers or in popping colors, and Texas-born artist Adrian Esparza, who has deconstructed a colorful serape blanket into an elaborate geometrical hanging on the wall, both recognize the traditions of production that take place along the border.
“We allowed the architects and the designers and the craftspeople to identify and help us figure out what the main themes were,” says Sims. “We’re looking at the border as a site of imagination, imagining what a border identity might be. And also critiquing the notion of the wall through proposals to make it infrastructure and create avenues of communication for families that remain separated by the fence.”
She hits at the real lesson here, which is that the U.S.-Mexico border is its own ecosystem, fed by millions of people and their stories. With so many different people in such a vast expanse of land, there is an immeasurable variety of ways to understand life along the border.
It’s been that way for a long time, and will continue that way for the unforeseen future. The challenge is to emphasize humanity within that often contentious and always multifarious landscape—the work in “The US-Mexico Border” succeeds in finding and paying homage to that humanity.