La Frontera Volume 45.1
SET UP TO FAIL (2) by Tanya Aguiñiga of cast glass soles with hot sculpted glass straps, 2018. The artist was born in San Diego, California, US and currently lives in Los Angeles, California, US. INSTALLATION VIEWS OF WORK BY JOSÉ VILLALOBOS. Photographs by Patrick R. Benesh-Liu.
GREEN CARD by Mayte Amezcua of copper, sterling silver, pieces of Green Card, stone, 2013. The artist was born and lives in Mexico City, Mexico. Image courtesy of the Artist.
Perspective is the crux of “La Frontera,” an exhibition first organized in 2013 by Lorena Lazard and Velvet Da Vinci Gallery, and then reunited for two further iterations in 2019 in New York City, and most recently in 2023, at San Diego’s own Mingei International Museum. In total, there have been seven individual instances of “La Frontera,” stretching over a period of both time and space, most appropriate for an exhibition that concerns itself principally with borders physical, conceptual, emotional, and cultural. It has steadily evolved and grown in scope, first appearing in Mexico City and then moving on to San Francisco, then to Indiana, Houston and New York in its previous two lives.
Sometimes, three’s a charm, with the 2023 exhibit being the first to be simultaneously held on both sides of the border. First shared between one of the most iconic and well-known sister cities in the North Americas, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, the show’s appearance at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas, El Paso, and Centro Cultural de las Fronteras at Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, was more than just a feat of logistics.
There is deep symbolism in kicking off the exhibition here, where border violence, and the effects of bigotry, have been entwined with the two cities. While the stereotypical lens of viewing Ciudad Juárez as a city overrun by cartels has, thankfully, languished as the world turns and changes, these issues remain embedded in people’s lives, without a real solution in sight. Yet there is a different type of strength, rarely seen by the careless eye, that has long stretched its roots between El Paso and Ciudad Juaréz; family, friendship, work relationships, conversations, recognition, financial support, all of these form an invisible bond between North and South, and it is this subtle connection which is highlighted by each artist’s personal take on the border.
The complexity of the border as a physical, sociocultural, emotional, and national institution was at the heart of its genesis as an exhibition concept, and the tenuousness of the border space emerges from it being the dividing line between points of view. Whether it’s a US citizen who has come to associate the border with crime and fear, or one of the countless people who cross the border every day for work, returning as the sun sets, existing in the twilight area between two great countries, the perspective one holds informs one’s thoughts on what the border means, and to a greater extent, where to slot the people on each side of that border into one’s mental arena.
Lazard and the gallery owners of Velvet Da Vinci, which at the time included Elizabeth Shypertt, found this a strong topic to address, head on, and put out an open call that was swiftly answered by many jewelry artists who resonated with the topic. That first response found its way to Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City, then to Velvet Da Vinci itself, in San Francisco, the Art Gallery at Indiana University Kokomo, and finally the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Texas. While Lorena and Velvet Da Vinci did not succeed at simultaneous showings across the border, the seed laid down in 2013 would bloom again.
During our talks we meander over to the political climate at the time, and it’s brought up the record number of immigrant deportations during his tenure. “You’re talking about the Obama administration, and things that we learned about, and happened in,” Lazard picks up the thread. “But the truth is that as a Mexican we have a different reality. And the reality of us is that everyone in Mexico knows someone who has had to move to the United States, but not now, but from ever. So I know the cousin of the sister of this person who works here, or the daughter of the lady who works at the house. But this is a reality that we’ve been involved forever. So it’s interesting for me that yes, the show was in this era, and in 2013, but this didn’t start in 2013,” she explains robustly, with Holmes nodding on. He interjects, “It’s been going on forever.”
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY by Thea Clark of leather gloves, found plastic toy and fruit, repurposed clothing, silver, thread, 2023. The artist was born in Ibiza, Spain and currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, US. Courtesy of the Artist.
She agrees. “Not only in terms of history, but in terms of our daily life. It’s been there forever. No? So I just wanted to make that very clear. I understand that when you talk about migration and the relationship, it also depends on where you’re standing at. The way you look at it, the way it affects you, the way you react to it. So that’s also something very important about the show.”
The initial exhibition was about a third from the US, a third from Mexico, and a third from international artists. As a tree does with the passage of seasons, while its first incarnation led to a robust blossoming, 2018 marked an interim period, where the exhibit was invited to show at the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, far away from the Mexican border, but very close to an ingress point through which so many of this country’s citizens have flowed. In its own messy, rich, unique classification, New York City is a border town, sitting between shore and ocean. Holmes had met MAD Assistant Curator Barbara Giffords at the Lois Boardman jewelry show at LACMA (a small but noteworthy example of how personal connections lay the groundwork) in 2017, at the start of the Trump administration, and he gave her a catalogue. With the furor of issues surrounding Muslim immigration and the border wall already beginning to boil, there was plenty of temporal resonance. Giffords thought it was the right time to revisit the exhibition. While slightly smaller, the MAD version still was accompanied by new additions, keeping it fresh.
The most recent revival of the exhibit has demonstrated its potential as a vehicle for expression and conversation. Lazard connected with Kerianne Quick, who had been in the previous two iterations of “La Frontera,” during a virtual visit to San Diego State University. She mentioned during her talk that the exhibit had never been to San Diego; indeed, it had never showed at the border. Quick had her Bing! moment, and along with Jess Tolbert, her partner in Secret Identity Projects (their own homebrew curatorial program), moved to make sure that this time, the exhibition would be as it should be: binational from the start.
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Quick and Tolbert began to find venues, and at first, the two US locations were planned to be the Rubin Center at the University of Texas, El Paso, and SDSU. “We both started reaching out into our networks to try and figure out who our partners were going to be on the other side, and I happened to talk to Rob Sidner from Mingei, and I was just asking for advice. I was just like, ‘Hey Rob, could I have a conversation with you? I’m trying to do this project. Any thoughts about who our partner might be in Tijuana?’ And he said, ‘You’re thinking about Mingei for this, aren’t you?’ ” Sidner is the previous executive director of the museum, and was responsible for its big renovation and grand reopening in 2021.
Everyone was gathered for a group conversation, the representatives from El Paso and San Diego, along with the curators, and through digging deep into their connections, venues in Mexico were found: Centro Cultural de las Fronteras and CECUT, or the Centro Cultural Tijuana. The search started in 2021, and two long years were needed before the exhibit was ready to open at its binational destinations.
Ariana Torres has just recently become Assistant Curator at the Mingei, and “La Frontera” was her first assignment. Of Filipino and Mexican descent, Torres also has ties to the subject of the exhibit. She was born and raised in San Diego (locals will know that most of us San Diegans are newcomers), and she went to school with a few of the jewelry artists who are in the exhibition, such as Georgina Treviño. Jewelry is one of her primary interests, and their display required a careful division of the space. She asked Holmes and Lazard about how to split the work into categories so the work could be more manageable.
Jewelry has this power to reveal the interior of the wearer. It broadcasts your beliefs, and it broadcasts your affiliations and your status and everything,
and so in a way jewelry is this decoder ring for our secret identity.
10-4 PARTNER! by Georgina Treviño of sterling silver, flip phone, phone cord, zirconia details, 2023. The artist was born and lives in San Diego, California, US. Collection of Georgina Treviño. Photograph by Patrick R. Benesh-Liu.
Torres has taken this first exhibition to heart, and putting it together had personal meaning for her. “I hope this show shines a light that people are three-dimensional, human beings,” she says, laughing. “It shows what happens when you put a barrier up, and what happens to not only the landscape, not only the animals, but the culture of that area. How it gets divided; what crosses over; language, in itself, can be a product of these borders, like Spanglish. It’s something that really struck me at SNAG, talking about one it’s a barrier, but others see it as an entry point, a point of exchange rather than closure.”
Her fellow classmate, a Mexican-American with Italian heritage, made a piece encasing an old cell phone in sterling silver. The piece was greatly appreciated by many exhibition participants, including Torres. “Georgina’s is all about exchange, sending messages across the border. The border is also a multidimensional space, if you will. It’s fluid, it’s heavily militarized at the same time, and it’s very contradictory. And it’s interesting to think about areas where it’s technically not the border, the border is actually on the other side of the fence in some areas, some areas are defined by the physical landscape itself, some are constructed through the landscape.”
It was only at the quinceañera for our friends’ daughter that things really clicked. There’s a rhythm to Latin life, that seeks to make joy of rites of passage, and put a signature to the landmarks of time. Given the high degree of violence Latin Americans suffer, both in the countries of Central and South America, and the dangers faced within the United States, it speaks to a deep regard for the present moment.
Capturing that moment in ritual is an aspect found in many pieces within “La Frontera” exhibition, particularly from those who live along the border. The crossing itself is a rite, marking the days and the passage of the sun. The cardboard paper Boots, fashioned together like papier-mâché, by Diana Benavidez (the aforementioned drone piñata maker) are evocative enough on their own. But a bit of background shines light on the story. As a young girl, Benavidez passed to and fro across the border with her dad. As they’d pass through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, which is the busiest in the world, she would be immersed in all sorts of items for sale, including trinkets and traditional crafts. The border fences themselves were a particularly salient memory, of scraps of clothes and shoes trailing on their metallic edging like the echoes of ghosts long since left.
ONLY NUMBERS I by Sandra Bostock of brass, synthetic suede, powder coat, patina, 2023. The artist was born and lives in Mexico City, Mexico. MARKED THE DIVIDE from the series La Frontera by Judy McCaig of weathered metal, steel, plexiglass, brass, tombac, aluminum, iron pyrite, 7.0 x 14.0 x 2.0 centimeters, 2023. The artist was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and currently lives in Barcelona, Spain. THE GOLDEN LADDER from the series Border Fence by Nancy Moyer of oxidized sterling silver, vermeil, resin-clad digital print, image by Mark Clark, 2017. The artist was born in Los Angeles, California, US and currently lives in McAllen, Texas, US. Photographs by Patrick R. Benesh-Liu.
BOOTS by Diana Benavidez of cardboard, tissue paper, glue, and masking tape, 2023. The artist was born in Chula Vista, California, US and currently lives in San Diego, California, US. Photograph by Patrick R. Benesh-Liu.
Holmes is full of excited passion for the exhibit and how it’s evolved over the years. He’s fully invested, and wise to the subtleties, differences and shared attributes between the two countries. That manifested itself as well in the 2023 and 2024 exhibitions, held simultaneously on both sides of the border. At its San Diego/Tijuana stop, for example, Diana Benavidez has an assortment of cardboard and masking tape footwear in the Mingei, but an altogether unusually different piece for the Mexican portion of the exhibition.
“She had the shoes at the Mingei, but at CECUT in Tijuana she had a piñata drone, and it had an electric motor, and it was hanging above the gallery, and it was so funny! I loved that piece. Because really, you wanted to take a stick and whack it out of the sky.” Eager to bring in an important detail, Lazard lays in, “It has also (a sign), it says ‘I’m watching you.’ ”
Banal objects take on new meaning. Take Quick’s three piece set, Worth Its Weight 2, 3, and 5, composed of brass and copper castings of water jugs and bottles, surfaced with leather to approach an adobe tone (tying the objects to luggage, as vehicles for transport across borders), strung together with cotton that appears as rope. Quick is from the United States, having been born in Glendale, and is quite white. This doesn’t stop her from having done water drops, placed deep in the desert, for passing migrants, which is at the heart of her piece. Appearing in shades of dirt as castoffs, closer attention reveals them as having been former containers for that life-giving liquid.
Her statement in the exhibition notes that, “When water is plentiful and accessible, little attention is paid to this vital resource; it is taken for granted, squandered, lost in transit. When it is scarce, it is fought over, hidden, and searched for.” That observation is of particular relevance to us here in the American Southwest, with water problems at code red. Yet humanity is here in the most simplest of objects, being offered to someone whose life it may save.
In our conversation, she goes on to mention, “Jewelry has this power to reveal the interior of the wearer. It broadcasts your beliefs, and it broadcasts your affiliations and your status and everything, and so in a way jewelry is this decoder ring for our secret identity.”
An invitation to meditate on their favorite piece brings Tolbert to one of the only mask forms in the exhibit. “Xingaderas piece, to me, was a top piece,” she exclaims. “Just because it was bringing in this different sort of object, it was bringing in these sort of mask forms, but also this video where a lot of artists in the exhibition They made this beautiful film, and their pieces are worn on the characters, and it’s sort of this mythological sort of hybrid documentary fantastical thing of the border that you get to witness and see and they’re just really creative and interesting artists.”
The truth is that life happens at the border. Extreme richness of experience happens for these people who go back and forth to make a living, and it’s easy to forget them as people when you’re just viewing them through the cold, impersonal eye of the media.
THE BORDER DEVILS by Xingaderas (Manuel Urueta, Celina Galicia, Brandon Zozaya) of papier-mâché, balloon, tape, acrylic paint, elastic string, 2023. The artists were born and currently live in El Paso, Texas, US. Collection of Manuel Urueta. Photograph by Celina Galicia and Edmund Lazano.
It’s easy to be reductive, to try to pin down what something is into easy terms. We try to make it definitive, and actually, it’s a mess. This exhibition, while certainly celebrating the messy aspects of life, is not haphazard at all, but rather deliberate and planned. Pieces span time and space, both within the same artist and across different artists, back to the first show in 2013, to pieces made just for this one. And within that maelstrom writhes a message, unclear, echoing as it were from many different voices, yet enticing. Within that chorus, we hear about both our humanity, and our inhumanity to each other. Barriers, sharp, jagged, pointy, asking us to go away. Colors, warm, welcoming, representing the presence of the living. These cohabitate at the border between Mexico and the United States, a reality among a wider, deafening narrative that seeks to twist that reality into something bizarre and foreign. It seeks to make monsters of that which is simply human. The absurdity can, if searched for carefully, be seen in the pieces within “La Frontera”.
“La Frontera” was displayed through August 4, 2024 at the Mingei International Museum, Balboa Park, Plaza de Panama, 1439 El Prado, San Diego, California 92101. It also appeared at CECUT, in Tijuana, Mexico through June 9, 2024.
UNIDENTIFIED MIGRANT by Fernanda Barba of stainless steel, acrylic, 2012. The artist was born in Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua, Mexico and currently lives in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Collection of Fernanda Barba. PYGMY OWL by Thomas Hill of copper, enamel, 2013. The artist was born in Rochford, Essex, UK and currently lives in San Francisco, California, US. FINGERPRINT (Dactilar) from the series La Frontera by Cristina Celis of high fire porcelain, oxidized sterling chain, twenty-four karat gold foil, 2013. The artist was born and lives in Mexico City, Mexico. RUN FOR THE BORDER by Mary Frisbee Johnson of copper, lithographed tin, sterling silver, 2013. The artist was born in Glasgow, Montana, US and currently lives in Waldport, Oregon, US. Collection of Mary Frisbee Johnson. Photographs by Patrick R. Benesh-Liu.
Patrick R. Benesh-Liu is Coeditor of Ornament and a lifelong participant in his parents’ creative journey. From growing up in the Ornament office on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles to his first administrative work in the Vista, California building during high school, Benesh-Liu has had the fortune of being immersed in craft, culture and wearable art. Within that world, he has come to respect and revere the intimacy of personal connections which underpins the craft community. Those connections traced themselves to a point at this year’s SNAG Conference, which took place in San Diego, a city that lives just within sight of the Mexican-US border. Two of the SNAG members hosting the conference, local Kerianne Quick, at SDSU’s metals program, and Seth Papac, were present at the SNAG Gallery Crawl opening for “La Frontera” at the Mingei International Folk Art Museum. The themes of the border running through the conference cemented themselves with the brilliant keynote speech by Ronald Rael. With the conflux between SNAG’s boisterous dialogue, the hometown museum, and the political issues roiling our nation, he felt a review of “La Frontera” was well due. He also gives his thoughts on the SNAG Conference 2024.
