The Writing on the Wall
November 26th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
- Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
Artists taking offense to the proposed 70-mile border wall in South Texas have come together in an exhibit appropriately titled “Art Against the Wall.” Rachel Brown, the exhibit organizer and arts instructor from South Texas College, says the project stemmed from an urge to speak out before it’s too late.
“I firmly believe artists are usually the first people to suffer when you have any kind of political regime that’s trying to oppress people,” she said, “because we are the ones trying to speak freely and free speech is usually one of the first things to go.”
Brown shared some of the pieces from the exhibit, currently at UT-Brownsville, with the Observer.
-”Mariposas” by Alma Casso (McAllen)
-”International Friendship” by Monica Ramirez (McAllen)
-”Build Bridges Not Walls” by Chris Van Dyck (McAllen)
-”Walls Kill Migrants” by Guadalupe Victoria (Monterrey, Mexico)
If built, the border wall itself - like the Berlin Wall and the Israeli security fence that Palestinians call an “apartheid wall” - will undoubtedly become a canvas for expression. Even the humorless Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr has urged Iraqis to paint “magnificent tableaux” on concrete barriers the U.S. has erected in Baghdad to protest the occupation. Brown and the other artists hope that day will never come.
