Race and Community Art Along the Border: A Collaborative Mapping Project

Description: Art along the U.S.-Mexico border has been punctuated by a series of high-profile spectacles meant to engage a broad international audience, yet the vast majority of the work being done in the region takes place in local communities, often by collectives or more loosely-organized groups. To date, there is no comprehensive location-specific database that illustrates the enormous creativity and coordination that comes from such grassroots efforts. This gap in knowledge and access means that the field is relatively understudied given its political and social prominence. This start-up project seeks to initiate a longer-term collaboration that will result in a web-based map platform that collects and catalogues art and visual activism of the border region, with a strong focus on interrogations of race, ethnicity, and migration. This platform will contribute to a broader understanding of how community-based art responds to the specifics of racial and ethnic identity, using the highly charged site of the border as an overall framework and discursive apparatus.

Click here to visit the Start Up webpage.

Start Up Lead: