Repossessing Border Space: Security Practice in North American Border Art

This paper discusses how the visual arts engage in representing border crossing experiences and, more specifically, how art interrupts border security practices and their rituals. After introducing the history of North American border art and different approaches to issues of border crossing, the pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative American studies 2016-10, Vol.14 (3-4), p.191-203
Main Author: Heide, Markus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Annie Han
Border studies
Daniel Mihalyo
Engelska
English
performance art
Ricardo Dominguez
surveillance
Susan Harbage Page
The Electronic Disturbance Theater
US-Canada Border
US-Mexico Border
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Summary:This paper discusses how the visual arts engage in representing border crossing experiences and, more specifically, how art interrupts border security practices and their rituals. After introducing the history of North American border art and different approaches to issues of border crossing, the paper will concentrate on specific works. It argues that the selected works of art perform interventions that confront the public with the borderlands as a place of violence and death. At the same time, artists are shown to employ different artistic strategies of symbolically re-possessing the borderlands for undocumented migrants who - when crossing it - experienced it as an existential obstacle.
ISSN:1477-5700
1741-2676
1741-2676
DOI:10.1080/14775700.2016.1267310