Walls and Border Art: The Politics of Art Display

Anne-Laure Szary

Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2012, vol. 27, issue 2, 213-228

Abstract: This detour through art aims at demonstrating the performative function of contemporary walls and barriers, designed to impose a geopolitical vision through landscape changes. The text assesses the link between art and borders by formulating the hypothesis that a “border art” (art on the border, art born from the border, art against the border, etc.) is emerging. It tries to understand how the closing up of a border not only reactivates cultural production on an international border, but also transforms the latter's meaning. On the US–Mexico border, for instance, the building of the security fence since 2006 seems to have been accompanied by a strong artistic upsurge. This can be nuanced by analyzing the changes in the nature of artistic production, with more mobile works, marked by a strong presence of videos and performances, as if the fixity imposed by the line requires a fluid creative answer.

Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2012.687216

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