Artist Statement: También este es un Lado de Sueños
The phrase “También de este lado hay sueños” can be found on a segment of the Mexican side of the border between the U.S. and Mexico. In English, this expression translates to: “On this side there are dreams too.” I found this statement to be not only powerful and profound but, also, immensely provocative. I immediately fell in love with this statement’s defiance of America’s death grip on “the dream”—its misguided belief that Anglo America is the only place that could inspire people to move great distances, to chase after those curtails of that life which is beyond our current reality.
This dream is not the (Anglo) American dream. It is not a consumer good, a commodity—something you buy in the attempt to secure completeness and meaning, something you later discard in the trash bin when you find yourself as empty and wanting as ever. With all of our discussions about dreaming in recent days, this statement, I think, resembles something closer to the transcendent dream. The dream in which despair is a word our mouths no longer remember the taste of and human dignity is restored. The dream of the day when shalom is realized.
I altered the phrase to say “También este es un lado de sueños” (meaning: this is also a side of dreams”) to emphasize that Mexicans not only have dreams but that Mexico is a place where the transcendent dream has been planted and has taken root. I spray painted “También este es un lado de sueños” on what is my interpretation of the fence between the U.S./Mexican border to show that the transcendent dream does not recognize arbitrary, socially constructed borders.
To complete this project, I used recycled materials including reclaimed wood and a flattened air duct. I did this for two important reasons. The first being: I wanted to limit my endeavor to only using materials that would be available to impoverished individuals living in the horrors of a Tijuana trash dump. It makes no sense to use expensive materials that are only available to economically privileged individuals when commenting on the nature of poverty. And the second being: I wanted to demonstrate that the human imagination—with its beauty, creativity, and ingenuity—is not contingent on socioeconomic status and that the significance of art is worth more than the total monetary value of its materials.