Border wall art channels hope, resistance and some clever fun

Detail from Jim Elliott’s documentary photography of artist Richard Lou’s “Border Door.” Photos of that installation are part of a new immigration-themed exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College. 

(Jim Elliott / Vincent Price Art Museum)

Walls, barriers and barricades, erected along borders to control the flow of people between regions, are nothing new. Historical examples include Hadrian's Wall and China's Great Wall, and contemporary examples include the Berlin Wall, the Israeli separation wall and sections of the wall at the U.S.-Mexican border. 

The U.S.-Mexico border has been the focus of political and social resistance on both sides for decades. As a focus of artistic statements, the wall has become the site of powerful images of protest, monuments to international solidarity and brotherhood, and memorials for deported people and those who have died attempting to cross the border.

As political rhetoric around immigration intensifies, the border wall has become the focus of numerous artistic projects. Artists from Mexico and around the world have turned the border wall into a place for powerful statements of resistance, protest, humanity, remembrance and solidarity. 

Dozens, if not hundreds of art projects can be found at the border. Some powerful examples include: 

“Border Door,” 1988: Richard Lou’s border art projects go back decades. They include simple, welcoming messages like “Border Door”: an open freestanding door erected at the U.S.-Mexico border outside San Diego. It’s a symbolic and dignified welcome to migrants who, as Lou puts it, are forced to "crawl under the barbed wire or through the drainage pipes and run in the darkness like frightened animals.”

“Border Door” is a political and personal statement. Immigration officials raided the workplace of Lou’s wife — then his girlfriend — and deported her. Documented with black-and-white photographs by Jim Elliott, the door stood for only two days before it was removed by the Border Patrol.

“Borrando la Frontera,” or “Erasing the Border,” 2011: Artist Ana Teresa Fernandez’s piece combines a simple idea with simple execution to deliver a strong visual message. She set up a ladder near the ocean on the Mexican side of the Tijuana-San Diego border wall and painted out a section using sky-blue primer, which seemed to make that part of the wall disappear. It’s a performance piece and a lasting invitation to look beyond the border.

Interactive border mural: California native Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana, whose mother was an undocumented immigrant, used a $7,500 grant to create a mural with friend and muralist Mauro Carrera, who is from Fresno, California. The interactive mural is of adults who came to the United States as children without documentation and who were later deported. A U.S. veteran and two mothers with American-born children are depicted, as well as a man who would have been eligible, if he had not been deported, for Barack Obama's 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which shielded people brought to the United States as children from deportation.

Visitors can hold up their phones to the painted faces on the mural and be taken to a website featuring first-person narrations. When asked about the mural’s intent, De La Cruz said, “I wanted to erase the border.” 

“Mural of Brotherhood,” 2016 (in progress): Artist Enrique Chiu is on a mission to paint the longest mural in the world along the border wall separating Mexico from the United States. With the “Mural of Brotherhood,” Chiu hopes to cover over 18,000 square meters and claim the Guinness World Record for the world's longest mural. 

“Kikito,” 2017: French artist JR’s giant image of a smiling baby, named Kikito, hovers over the U.S.-Mexican border, near the Mexican town of Tecate, an hour southeast of San Diego.  Sitting just a few yards beyond the California side of the border fence, the work only graced the area for a month. 

However, during that month, “Kikito” generated huge media attention. And JR’s Instagram, with over 1 million followers, now featured an iconic photo of Kikito staring down happily at a pair of U.S. Border Patrol agents.

“Seesaw Wall,” 2019: Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello’s “Seesaw Wall” was a whimsical experience that functioned as a metaphor for U.S.-Mexico relations. Rael, an architecture professor at U.C. Berkeley, and San Fratello, an interior design professor at San Jose State University, installed three hot pink seesaws that pass through the border wall between Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas. People on both sides joined and had fun riding the seesaws.

For Rael, when people on either side of the border used the seesaws together, in cooperation, the wall “became a literal fulcrum for U.S.-Mexico relations, and children and adults were connected in meaningful ways on both sides with the recognition that the actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side.” The project touched on themes of mutual cooperation, benefit, dependence and play. Yet, like so many other border projects, the project was temporary. 

Many other art projects are likely in the works at the moment. As long as a wall or barrier exists along the U.S.-Mexico border, it will continue to shape the political and social narrative around immigration policy and border enforcement. And Mexican and Mexican-American artists, joined by their international colleagues, will be the vanguard of that effort.