Border Art

This chapter analyzes three works of border art that use aestheticized forms of protest to interrogate social and political divides. Using the tropes of protest, artists can intervene in complex international situations, distilling debates into a visual language and emphasizing the similarities between each side of the border rather than difference. The Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo (BAW/TAF) staged the first US-Mexico border performance, End of the Line (1986), to subvert the dominant construction of the border region as war zone. Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s three Vieques interventions (2001-2005) mine a different geographic region but continue to use the aesthetics of protest to interpret the US neocolonial militarization of Puerto Rico and its island territory. Tania Candiani’s 2009 Battleground piece in Ciudad Juárez and El Paso continues this interrogation of borders and war by interpreting defense and aggression within the framework of narcoviolence.