PARQUE and FENCE are part of a series of works that look at the U.S.-Mexico border as a region overrun with local embodiments of globalism and symbols of exclusion over which identities oscillate. The work celebrates the miscegenation and cultural pluralism of this working urban crossroad. Moreover, the work concerns itself with experiences of divisiveness, dislocation and the psychological resonances of an exilic interior inscribed onto the landscape. Borders aim to shape uncomplicated forms for self-projection and differentiation through infinitesimally precise lines. In practice, they are exceptionally complex and tenuous. As a national demarcation, a border can serve the psyche’s need for orientation. In our contemporary geo-political context, borders are the moral thresholds through which the neo-imperial tendencies of globalization strategically navigate. They become essential to the active underdevelopment and ghettoization of the Third World. Borders are fortified to protect a unilaterally beneficial order and reinforce intentional social structures. All crises of human liberty are played out over borders, in any sense of the word. FRONTIERRA takes place in the eye of this geopolitical tumult: in a region where the border is not in the margins, but at its center. For those inhabiting this international site of contention, the wars raged over borders are daily realities. Their citizenship to a bi-national conurbation takes precedence to their national marginality. There is an ever-present awareness of el otro lado. Those residing in the borderlands are between identities, and in a constant struggle for representation. Their double consciousness transgresses structures of oppression, and their mobility redefines the exterior as a mere extension of the interior. Those straddling the border are able to see the continuous cultural landscape that it lacerates. They understand that duality is not oppositional, but pluralistic and dialectic. The work understands identity to be a capricious social construct, and as such, it takes the form of appurtenances of a creative and transcendent view of reality. The individual pieces refute, rectify, and respond to rigid hierarchies and definitions. They destabilize certainties and embody a material and formal dialogue in and about places where dialogue has been suppressed. They are conceptualizations regarding the nature of man, born into a system of structured relationships, yet in a constant state of becoming. They interrogate socio-spatial stratification with revisionary acts of self-determination. Alyssa Navas Hutton