When construction began on Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall, an influx of public art ensued. Graffiti artists began inking up the walls, and performance artists were creating political art. French artist JR created a huge paste-up mural of a boy peeking into America. Coffins were hinged to parts of the wall in Tijuana, while artists in Ciudad Juárez created seesaws that spanned both sides.
One Mexican-born artist was way ahead of them all. Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist and writer, calls the U.S.-Mexico border “a space for cultural misunderstanding.” The artist, now 66, has been making border art since the 1980s, long before it was trendy.
In a new documentary about the artist called 100 Ways To Cross The Border, Gómez-Peña tells the Dallas-based film director Amber Bemak that: “The border became a space for the presentation of ideas and projects, then came the festivals that turned the border into some kind of hipster international convention art space for safari tourists.”
