BORDERLAND: The MiniaturesPhoto Series
201825 Artworks

Two things are for certain:

as long as there is humanity,

violence is certain

and art will always be created from its sparks.

Alia Ali

The term “borderland” is most commonly referred to as the crossroads where nations collide. It is a porous zone that diffuses outward from an artificially-imposed, human-made punctuation known as a border. Borders enact violence on the geography and identity of those living in borderlands. They are both imprints of power and scars of destruction. Borderlands, on the other hand, are the result of naturally occurring interactions among people and of nature trying to forge an existence in proximity to what is around them. BORDERLAND (2017-ongoing) re-examines these demarcated zones as territories of exploration, drawing attention to them as transient physical spaces and a contemporary phenomenon from which the body of artwork is presented and the viewer is a participant.

The question of who is on the other side of the fabric addresses the very nature of belonging and interrogates the binary of home and exile. Is the subject—the norm-setter, the decision maker—the include? Or the exclude? In the human act of processing our surroundings, we unconsciously categorize. We separate good from evil, familiar from unfamiliar, threat from safety, alien from native, and so on. Accustomed to categorization, we create these dichotomies ourselves. This theme of duality extends to experiencing the moment in which the mysterious becomes apparent, freedom becomes restraint, and illusion becomes reality.

Seeing is an act of power, but so is being seen. Are the -cludes in hiding or are they being hidden? Is this  anonymity active (self-imposed) or passive (imposed by others)? In the act of seeing the -cludes, we are forced to confront the ways we include and exclude others in our daily lives. Is exclusion/inclusion motivated by a primitive fear and search for security? A form of self-preservation? A metamorphosis of the outcast into a villain?

Like borders, the fabric is narrow but long, physically defined yet interpretative in identity. Both have a capacity for exploration. Textiles are products of the earth, canvases through which culture manifests itself at the surface, and objects that become a part of us. Might we say the same of borders?

BORDERLAND was inspired by the aggressive push to block access, coupled with a strong nationalistic phenomenon taking precedence over providing security and refuge for those in greatest need. This discourse has already begun to build walls around the globe while simultaneously eroding communities built on diversity.

The –cludes are “undocumented” characters whose names are ambiguous and whose exact location remains a mystery. They are unidentifiable, except for visible details such as color, symbolism, and texture, which eventually and simultaneously draw on a sense of connection and alienation. Their existence questions what it is to be human; what lies without, and what lies within.

Fabric, ancient in its invention, becomes archival with the passage of time. Like the human beneath it or the border it symbolizes within this body of work, cloth is also vulnerable to the elements and to time. When all is said and done, borders shift and textiles disintegrate, but if well-preserved and nurtured with culture, knowledge, and grace, they may remain intact.

Borderlands, like textiles, are territories of exploration; zones in which we will be judged for our humanity.