SAN DIEGO — In the early 1980s, barely any infrastructure separated San Diego and Tijuana. George H.W. Bush hadn’t yet built a slatted fence along the border, a 46-mile barrier that plunged into the Pacific Ocean; and Trump had not yet demolished that to erect a solid 30-foot wall. Instead, an old chain link fence ran between the two countries, its intention to block cattle, not people. This helped an international group of artists, most of whom were Chicanx and Latinx, to build relationships along this nebulous zone dividing Mexico and the United States.
The loose collective became known as Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo (BAW/TAF). It comprises many eras and iterations, but David Avalos and Victor Ochoa of the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego co-founded the group, turning the border into an artistic hotspot between 1984 and ’89. The small cultural center still sits at the edge of the sprawling Balboa Park, home to most of the city’s museums, and the exhibition Suturing the Border: Re-Membering BAW/TAF highlights five projects that span four decades. Through video, photography, ephemera, murals, and art installations, the show focuses on one of the most recognized artistic interventions, “Border Sutures” (1990), and dives into contemporary transborder projects that continue the spirit of BAW/TAF despite the newer, xenophobic infrastructure that intimidates migrants.
In “Border Sutures,” artists Berta Jottar, Richard Lou, Patricio Chavez, Carmela Castrejon, and Robert Sanchez spent a month trekking along the border and implanted oversized, bulky steel staples into the soil. Even in regions where fencing was absent, the objects, surrounded by an altar-like circle of rocks, called attention to the division between cultures. Despite this, the staples — tools associated with ruptures, wounds, and healing — also serve as symbols of unification.
Another section of the exhibition shows documentation from “Poblado Maclovio Rojas” (1997), a community-engaged mural project spearheaded by “The Three Graces,” or Berenice Badillo, Lorenza Rivero, and Rebecca Rivero. In Colonia Maclovio Rojas, a makeshift community near Tijuana where shelters are constructed from garage doors and cardboard, the Three Graces collaborated with local youths to paint more than 400 feet of the garage door facades; bold renderings of plants, nature, and children celebrate everyday life. Artistic interventions like this one brought media attention to the border, dispelling myths of war and crime, and celebrating a women-led movement that had built a bustling society including a bank, soccer field, and community resource center.
Today, BAW/TEF’s spirit continues. Artist and activist Tanya Aguiñiga led “Border Quipo/Quipu Fronterizo” (2016–18), part of the AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides) Project. For her performance, the artist and others roamed between cars and pedestrians on both sides of the San Ysidro border crossing, speaking to commuters trapped in the gridlock, and handing them two strands of thread to tie into a knot. Aguiñiga collected these knotted threads and assembled them into a quipu, an ancient Incan recording device, hanging it on a billboard for all the commuters to see. As people completed the task, she initiated conversations about the border and immigration, and thus the quipu also became a stand-in for oral history.
At the center of Suturing the Border are the ways that BAW/TEF stimulated the borderlands community with arts, challenging the uncertainty and limbo of border life, and bringing people on both sides together.
Suturing the Border: Re-Membering BAW/TAF continues at the Centro Cultural de la Raza (2004 Park Boulevard, San Diego, California) through July 21, with a closing reception on July 20. The exhibition was organized by Centro Cultural de la Raza.
