The Fence

The Fence

Jun 2–25, 2000

The Fence by Luis Camnitzer was an installation that had its conceptual origins in a New York Times cover story on the erection of a border fence in Nogales, Arizona designed to be ‘friendly and beautiful’ from both sides of the border. Camnitzer edited the text into paragraphs that became captions of the same cover image eight times. Ultimately, Camnitzer’s work referred to another dimension of ‘border’ issues that is virtually immeasurable, involving broad-ranged disciplines, from economy to sociology, free trade to neoliberalism, anthropology to the (de)formation of concepts of nationhood, and ethnicity to immigration.