JR’s Latest: A Child Caught Between the U.S.-Mexico Border
In Tecate, Mexico, a little boy with dark hair and curious eyes peers carefully over the barrier wall that borders San Diego County. Rising up almost 70 feet, his hands seemingly grip the barrier tightly, as if he were holding onto his mother’s body.
The French artist JR pasted that plaintive image on Wednesday, his first installation in Mexico. The piece, based on his photo of a 1-year-old who lives with his mother and grandparents in Tecate, is fully viewable only from the American side of the divide.
The idea came to JR in a dream. “Some people dream about fantasy worlds, I dream about walls,” he said in a phone interview. And though his artwork was not intended as a direct response to the Trump administration, it has extra resonance this week as the White House moved to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation.
“I wonder, is this kid worrying about what will happen? What does he think?” JR said. “At one year old, you don’t see the frontier or which side is better.”
In Tecate, Mexico, a little boy with dark hair and curious eyes peers carefully over the barrier wall that borders San Diego County. Rising up almost 70 feet, his hands seemingly grip the barrier tightly, as if he were holding onto his mother’s body.
The French artist JR pasted that plaintive image on Wednesday, his first installation in Mexico. The piece, based on his photo of a 1-year-old who lives with his mother and grandparents in Tecate, is fully viewable only from the American side of the divide.
The idea came to JR in a dream. “Some people dream about fantasy worlds, I dream about walls,” he said in a phone interview. And though his artwork was not intended as a direct response to the Trump administration, it has extra resonance this week as the White House moved to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation.
“I wonder, is this kid worrying about what will happen? What does he think?” JR said. “At one year old, you don’t see the frontier or which side is better.”
The United States-Mexico border has been especially fertile ground for artists lately. In Tijuana, the Japanese collective Chim Pom built a treehouse called the “USA Visitors Center,” that JR visited. An American photographer, Richard Misrach, and a Mexican composer, Guillermo Galindo, have joined forces to craft instruments from the objects migrants leave behind. And the Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu created “Carne y Arena,” an immersive virtual-reality exhibition that simulates crossing the border. It’s currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
For JR, whose recent work has frequently dealt with immigrants and refugees, the Mexican installation is part of a continuing conversation. “People will always migrate,” he said. “When we built walls, people built tunnels. When we closed places, they went by the water. The history of humanity is the story of people migrating. Of course, that has to be regulated.”
But the idea that borders should be closed, he said, “for me, that’s not a discussion. As an artist, I try to bring back perspective. For this little kid, there are no walls and borders.”