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BORDERS The USA Mexico border wall was a legacy issue for Donald Trump however observers point out that both George W Bush and Barack Obama built large stretches of the barrier and deported many more people. The border is 1954 miles long and the wall covers some 649 miles according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) information. The Trump administration said they' had completed more than 400 miles of border wall during his presidency. However, BBC Reality check report that in Jan 2021 only 80 miles of new barriers have been built where there were none before - that includes ‘47 miles of primary wall, and 33 miles of secondary wall built to reinforce the initial barrier’. ‘The vast majority of the 452 miles is replacing existing structures that had been built by previous US administrations’. Perhaps the real question for these builders and the other 15 or so major border wall constructors across the globe is - Does this solve the problem of migration ? A recent BBC news report featured a 12 year old Guatemalan boy taken into custody on the US Mexican border. He was escaping poverty and gang violence and had to leave his family and travel alone to the border. Now, hoping to get an education in the USA, he was frightened and in tears as the police took him away to a vast sports hall converted into a detention centre.

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Artists have seen border walls and fences as an opportunity for intervention with the Teeter Totter Wall an installation by Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello with Colectivo Chopeke being awarded the Beazley Design of the Year award in 2020.


These bright pink, seesaws were installed bridging the US Mexican border in 2019. Tim Marlow, Director of the Design Museum when awarding the prize said  ‘The Teeter-Totter Wall (...) encouraged new ways of human connection and struck a chord that continues to resonate far beyond El Paso in the USA and Juarez in Mexico. It remains an inventive and poignant reminder of how human beings can transcend the forces that seek to divide us.’


The architects have also devised other border interventions including the Xylophone Wall which was played in 2014 and can be heard on Youtube. In Tate Briton you can find the work of Argentinian artist Judi Werthein who set up a trainer brand, Brinco (‘jump’ in Spanish) in 2005. She distributed the trainers which included a map, a torch, a compass and pockets to hide money and medicine. She gave these free of charge to people attempting to cross the border, at the same time, just over the border in the US city of San Diego, she sold the shoes as ‘limited edition’ art objects for over $200 a pair to fund the project. Another Artist Cosimo Cavallaro used 9,000 bricks of expired cotija cheese to build his own wall at the Mexican Border in a work entitled ‘Make America Grate Again’.