Courtesy of the artist. © Xavier Tavera. By Andrea Lepage Mexican-born naturalized U.S. citizen, Xavier Tavera (b. 1971) recalls crossing the U.S.-Mexico border a few times with his family as a small child, saying, “I remember the tension and anxiety it produced when my family approached the crossing bridge by car.” Not breaking any laws, Tavera recollects that the family nonetheless waited in uneasy silence until they passed through the checkpoint. Tavera’s memory of crossing underscores the power of the border. The border has—since its inception—functioned as a visible manifestation of the U.S.'s perceived power and political dominance over its southern neighbor. In an interview, Tavera summarized the point: “Mexicans, Latinx and Chicanos—regardless of place of birth and migratory status, and even Latinx living in the U.S. that have never crossed the border—are deeply marked by the notion of border. ‘Border’ is a concept that has defined us symbolically and culturally.” President Donald Trump’s nativist rhetoric combined with his promises to enhance border security and build a border wall have led to increased international focus on the borderlands and those who pass through them. Tavera’s Borderlands series visually explores this territory and also considers the individuals who occupy it. He notes that his conceptualization of the Borderlands series emerged in response to the current administration’s language about the border, explaining, “The abrasive rhetoric that the current government administration has used towards the border has been one of the propelling motivations of this project.” The Borderlands photographs seek to mitigate the detrimental effects of such speech on Latinx communities by engineering close encounters with these individuals who occupy the region and by proposing imaginary alternatives to the border wall. Tavera took his first of three trips to the U.S.-Mexico border in January of 2017, intending to document the surrounding borderlands and to examine the border wall. Following its path, Tavera revisited the border in May of 2017 and again in March of 2018. He expects to return at least three more times to bring the Borderlands project to completion. During these trips, Tavera alters the photographed landscapes by digitally superimposing tables, tunnels, or shelters on the desolate terrain. In considering the possible use of these imaginary projects by unpictured communities, Tavera asked, “Would we find commonalities or differences in a given space? What would be the risks of communication and involvement with a different culture or community?” Tavera’s phrasing provides a counterpoint to Trump’s frequent anti-immigrant statements that emphasize difference and reject the possibility of cross-cultural commonality. Trump’s March 13, 2018 tweet—issued during Tavera’s third trip to the border—is representative of the U.S. president’s fear-inducing rhetoric: Tavera’s series visually rejects speech that casts the children and adults who cross the border with or without authorization as threats to U.S. citizens. Instead, the artist conceptualizes the border as a scar across the rugged landscape, a characterization that evokes Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa’s 1987 description of the border in her seminal text Borderlands/La Frontera. Anzaldúa defined the border as both an injurious and injured site, “una herida abierta [an open wound] where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.” Extending Anzaldúa’s metaphor to the physical border barrier, Tavera concludes that "the political character of this open wound materializes in a wall with sentiments of nationalism, protectionism and absurdity.” Like Robert Misrach’s Border Cantos photographs, many of Tavera’s Borderlands images are unpopulated, revealing only the residues of human presence, and even those traces appear unwelcome. One of Tavera’s photographs centers on a set of chained tires of the kind that would be dragged behind U.S. border patrol trucks to smooth out the terrain. The procedure, variously called “pulling the drag,” “sign cutting,” or “cutting for sign,” allows border patrol agents to identify new footprints to track and capture migrants Courtesy of the artist. © Xavier Tavera. Tavera’s photographs are part of an upsurge of border-related artwork produced since 2006, the year when then-president George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act. The bill sought to restrict passage across the border using systematic human and drone surveillance and through the creation of reinforced fencing. In one of his photographs, Tavera captures a surveillance blimp apparently preparing for flight under the cover of night. The star-like lights surrounding the blimp penetrate the pitch black landscape, serving as absurd beacons of protectionism amidst the expanse of the borderlands. Courtesy of the artist. © Xavier Tavera.
Courtesy of the artist. © Xavier Tavera. Courtesy of the artist. © Xavier Tavera. "What I like about portraiture," Tavera said, "is the contact with the people.” In a 2016 interview, Tavera discussed the power of the camera to grant him access to people and to open a metaphorical window into their lives. He underscores that “the main purpose of this is to try to understand, not to make assumptions” about the sitters. Despite Trump’s attempt to conjure up the false image of an army of Mexicans ready to overtake the border, the U.S. is not a coveted destination for all. Courtesy of the artist. © Xavier Tavera. Tavera photographed three dancers on the streets of Nogales, Mexico, for example, who had no intention of crossing the border. Like Tavera, it was, instead, their destination. The dancers carried drums and each wore rattles crafted from empty bullet shells. In the course of their brief exchange, Tavera never saw their faces, which were obscured by masks with antlers. Verbal communication was minimal because their Spanish was limited and Tavera did not speak their indigenous language. Nevertheless, he learned that they were fulfilling a vow to travel around the Mexican countryside for a year. When Tavera encountered the dancers, they were only weeks away from their return back to their waiting families in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Recognizing the similarity of their pilgrimage to the border-as-destination, Tavera recounts that he asked permission to touch the religious figure of San Judas (Saint Jude) imprinted on the drum. Commonly associated with hopeless causes, Saint Jude is also the patron saint of hope. In his recollection of this meeting, Tavera told me, “I recall the encounter as a sign of protection to my travels from mystical creatures from the border.” Tavera has often discussed the power of portraiture to foster prolonged confrontations of the type that rarely happen in person. With portraits, he said, “people can approach, and look at them, and analyze every little detail: the earrings, the makeup, the hat, the mustache. And, that’s something that unfortunately we don’t do in the street because it is very intrusive. Here, you have the opportunity to look and to analyze.” Oftentimes, close looking reveals the absurdity of the situation. Tavera photographed a married couple, one on each side of the border fence in the small desert town of Jacumba, California. The recent erection of the border fence has complicated their way of life and disrupted familial connections that used to flow more freely across a once invisible border between the U.S. and Mexico. Tavera tells their story: “They used to walk to his mother's house on the Mexican side daily but with the new fence in place he has to travel thirty minutes to the crossing check point and thirty minutes to svhis mom’s place. They have been married for many years and now they have to spend weeks separated by the fence.” The husband rests one hand on the bars and the other affectionately on his wife’s shoulder. Despite the barrier physically separating the couple, Tavera records an intimate moment of communication and exchange. Courtesy of the artist. © Xavier Tavera.
In his 1995 collection of short essays, The Crystal Frontier, writer Carlos Fuentes noted that the U.S.-Mexico border is not just a line of demarcation that separates two nations from each other, but rather a site through which people, ideas, and commodities flow. Fuentes wrote, "Properties, customs offices, real estate deals, wealth and power provided by control over an illusory, crystal border, a porous frontier through which each year pass millions of people, ideas, products, in short, everything…” The border wall—always incomplete—stands as a symbolic attempt to control the flow of people, yet it cannot contain the flow of ideas. Tavera’s Borderlands photographs penetrate the physical barrier to foster communication and underscore commonalities across the porous border. Andrea Lepage is associate professor of art history at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. The exhibition on the work of Xavier Tavera was held at ProjekTraum FN l'atelier Glidden Wozniak in Friedrichshafen, Germany (July 2018). This reflection by Lepage on Tavera's works will be expanded and translated into German for a future catalogue. Xavier Tavera, Untitled, Borderlands, 2017-18. Images courtesy of the artist. © Xavier Tavera.
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