America’s Wall

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Overview

This performance was inspired by the persistent questioning Tanya faces regarding the existence of a “wall” in her travels across the U.S. and Mexico. It documents and extracts evidence of the wall’s existence—there are three consecutive walls in the part of Mexico where grew up—in front of Trump’s proposed wall prototypes. This section of border fence, at Shroud of Turin, is made up of corrugated jet landing mats that were recycled from the Gulf War/Desert Storm. It was erected during Operation Gatekeeper, a strategic reinforcement of the U.S./Mexico Border, which was responsible for more migrant deaths in its first year than in the entirety of the previous seventy five years of Border Patrol History. She and her team took rust impressions from these walls on cotton as evidence of their existence.