Ten years after the original exhibition La Frontera, the curators have re-visioned the show, including many of the original artists and also drawing from the community of artists who live and work in the borderlands. I'm so honored to be included again, and grateful to have come through the making process with a totally different experience. This time it was harder. I felt like I was circling around the subject at a great distance, not feeling equipped or qualified to talk about it, and it was months before I started seeing images, and finally found a way to put feeling into material. Much like the piece I made for the original exhibition, these reference specific situations but I'm less interested in telling a story than I am in capturing an emotion. For me, they are doing what jewelry often does, which is to hold a big memory in a small space.
Voices/Voces, 2023
Powder coated steel, 18k gold, enamel paint, walnut
So many stories are lost in the noise of the border. Spoken at a human volume, they’re no match for the microphones and megaphones that pile words on this side or that side. Voices/Voces is my reflection on a conversation with a Mexican family member about her experience of decades of crossing, relating to and living with the US-Mexico border. She talked about early days, when the border was barely there, and how different it is now. Each story she told stood out in bright contrast to the cycles of data churning out from the border day by day, driving policy while reducing lived experiences to a blur.
Many thanks to M.P.
Border Signet, 2023
24-karat gold plated silver, graphite, rubber erasers
When a border is drawn, what is erased? Habitats, livelihoods, migration routes, kinship connections, biodiversity, access to basic necessities: food, water, medicine. Those with the power to create borders are rarely the ones to feel their impacts. Border Signet references historical signet rings which could be used from the comfort of a palace to seal agreements changing lives and landscapes hundreds of miles away. In place of an intaglio, the ring contains a sharpened graphite slab, positioned level with the erasers on either side.
“La Frontera explores the U.S.–Mexico border and what it represents as a physical reality, geopolitical construction, and condition of being. Working in contemporary jewelry, the artists included present stories of geography, identity, and desire, creating profound relationships between concept and the implied wearer.
First mounted in 2013, the original La Frontera exhibition considered the border as the physical place where complex relationships between Mexico and the U.S. are most visible. Re-curated on its tenth anniversary, La Frontera brings together many artists from its first iteration with artists from the borderlands, deepening the ways in which the exhibition includes the lived experiences of transfronterizxs.”
Many, many thanks to curators Mike Holmes and Lorena Lazard, and the incredible work of Jess Tolbert, Kerianne Quick and Cassandra Adame coordinating the show.