Paysage frontière

Paysage Frontière, translated as Border Landscape was commissioned by Dr. Vince Dominguez in July 2019, completed in February 2020, and written to underscore the border crisis that escalated in the 2010s between the United States and Mexico. In this work, the theme is established specifically with the installation Resistencia by Marcela Armas in mind. In this visual installation, the borderline of Mexico and the United States is drawn in the dark space of the room with an incandescent metallic filament. According to the installation’s own description, “The work is presented in the physical space as a real limit, overflowing with tension and incandescence. Resistance is a representation of the United States-Mexico border executed with a metal incandescent filament called resistance heating. A series of steel cables, or “tensors”, allow the set of vectors to configure the border drawing in three-dimensional space. The wires act as a group of forces in tension that enable the line to be sustained in space.” The resistance used in the installation establishes a metaphorical relationship to the sociopolitical reality that is lived on both sides of the border by representing it as an overwhelming line, filled with tension and incandescence. Resistance heating demands and consumes large amounts of energy from the electrical grid that feeds it.