Repellent Fences

Artist : Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist and Nathan Young
Location : U.S. / Mexico Border
Year : 2015
Researcher : Jessica Fiala

Postcommodity’s “Repellant Fence” was a temporary 2-mile long installation along the U.S. / Mexico border that took place between October 9-12, 2015. The project entailed working closely with individuals, communities, and institutions to acquire permission for installation and public access across public and private lands on both sides of the border and to plan educational and public programming.

The installation itself was comprised of 26 balloons, each 10 feet in diameter and modeled on "scare eye" balloons, an ineffective bird repellant product. The "scare eye" balloon is described by Postcommodity as a form of "indigenous ready-made" as well as a symbol of the "social, cultural, economic and political interconnectedness of Indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere." The work therefore functions on multiple levels - the eye references the omnipresence of border surveillance, the installation across open fields highlights the often-arbitrary nature of borders, and the imagery emphasizes shared cultural expressions from a region that spans the border.

More Below

VIEW
WEBSITE

The work is significant in part for its scale -- promoted as the largest binational land art installation ever exhibited on the U.S./Mexican border. Across 2 miles, the installation re-inhabited space, if only temporarily, calling attention to a history of shared terrain and offering a multilayered critique of contemporary border surveillance and politics.

Postcommodity calls attention to the U.S. / Mexico borderlands as a territory rife with surveillance systems along a border that divides communities and disrupts long-established relationships between peoples and lands. The collective seeks to find ways to respond to this contentious space by creating binational connections between American Indian, Mexican, and Latin American immigrant communities.

All copyright belongs to Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University.

Progress Agency