Art breaks down "invisible" border

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 00:00

The steel fence that slices the United States - Mexico border now has a small, "invisible" gap in it, thanks to a University of Arizona Art Professor Alfred Quiroz.

Quiroz bolted a digital vinyl photograph, spanning 12 feet high and 60 feet wide, to the wall to give the illusion that the wall isn't there - so people standing on the Mexico side can see right into the U.S.

“We placed it on the border wall in Mexico and basically it's a photograph of exactly what's on the other side,” Quiroz said. “In other words, making the wall somewhat invisible.”

The photo is located on the main street along the border about a half a mile west of the border crossing in Nogales, Sonora Mexico.

Quiroz and his team installed the picture on Feb. 9 by lining up the image with the surrounding background, and bolting it into the steel.

“The border patrol doesn't allow anybody to put anything on the wall on the American side,” Quiroz said. “Whereas on the Mexican side, the Mayor gave us carte blanche, we can do whatever we want.”

“(The Mayor) said ‘it's not our wall. We didn't put it up. Do whatever you want,'” Quiroz said. “So we have literally thought of the border wall as becoming a gallery.”

In fact, the entire project was funded by Mexican cultural organizations.

John-Paul Olson, a UA Fine Arts senior, went down to Nogales for the instillation with Quiroz.

“I went as a photojournalist for documentation purposes,” Olson said. “I tried to take as many photos as I could down there.”

Olson said he got involved when Quiroz made an announcement about his border art project in class, and he asked Quiroz if he could come along.

“Working with that guy was really great,” Olson. “That guy is an amazing professor. He's really stellar and I've worked with him inside and out of class.”

Olson said he tried to do whatever he could to document the art installation.

“I got up in the crane…and I was taking photos from four stories high. I was scrambling all over, trying to get great shots."

Olson said he put the photos together and made a stop motion film which he hopes to eventually post on his Web site.

Quiroz has been collaborating with two Mexican artists, Alberto Morackis and Guadalupe Serrano, since 2004 on art projects related to the border. Morackis died in December, leaving the other two to continue without him.

Morackis and Guadalupe are also known in Tucson for making the sculpture that sits outside of the University of Arizona's Harvill building. The sculpture, entitled, “Border Dynamics” is of four figures, two on each side, pushing against a real piece of the border wall. The sculpture also has a twin located on the Mexico side of the border.

Quiroz, Morackis and Guadalupe also collaborated on aluminum art pieces located along a 190-foot-long stretch of the border wall, four blocks from the border crossing entrance.

“(Morackis and Guadalupe) did some images related to border crossing where as I did 16 large-scale, 14 feet by 16 feet, milagros,” Quiroz said.

He said milagros are religious icons primarily used in the Catholic religion for protection, with a history dating back to ancient Greece.

“They are little miracles in other words,” he said.

He said he used actual milagro images and made up some of his own that related to the border crossing, like a running leg with a tennis shoe.

They were first put up in Nogales, Sonora in 2004 but were shortly moved to Agua Prieta, Sonora Mexico near Douglas, Ariz. They gained international attention in 2007 when they were photographed by National Geographic. Because of the high exposure the art received, the milagros were moved back to Nogales, Sonora to attract tourists to the city.

“They get people from all over the world coming to look at these,” Quiroz said.

Art about the border crossing by Alberto Morackis and Guadalupe Serrano.

Courtesy of Alfred Quiroz

“We really didn't do it for the recognition. We did it for our concern of what's going on.” Quiroz said. “Trying to use art as a way of portraying our political message.”

He said he hopes to warn immigrants of the dangers of crossing the border. He stressed that the important message in his art is human life and that the political systems that Mexico and the U.S. have right now lead to people crossing illegally and often dying in the desert.

He said if you look at the train station in Nogales, Sonora you can tell how many people are trying to cross the border because there will be 200-300 backpacks "just sitting there" abandoned because illegal crossers are advised by their "coyote" crossing guides to travel light.

Quiroz said Americans are under the misconception that Mexicans want to move to the U.S. permanently, when they usually just want to work in the U.S. doing the "jobs nobody else wants to do."

“Whenever somebody says the phrase, ‘border issues' I say ‘yeah I worry about those Canadians.'" Quiroz said. “It has to do with racism and the racist attitudes. That is really what it's about.”

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