OPC, in association with the Instituto Vallartense de Cultura, are honored to present DeLIMITations: Mapping the border of 1821 between Mexico and the United States, a site-specific installation by artists Marcos Ramírez ERRE and David Taylor.
DeLIMITations is a 2,400 mile long installation invoking nineteenth-century exploration and conquest expeditions. In 2014, artists Marcos Ramírez ERRE and David Taylor set out to trace the historical 1821 border between Mexico and the western territories of the United States. That border stretched from the present-day Oregon/California state line to the Gulf of Mexico just west of Louisiana, and had previously only existed as a reference on historic maps and treaty documents because it had never been surveyed or physically marked.
For DeLIMITations, ERRE and Taylor asked the question, “What would Mexico and the United States look like if that boundary had been fully realized?” ERRE and Taylor, accompanied by filmmaker José Inerzia, who helped document the process, drove a van outfitted to serve as a mobile command center, fabrication space, and camper along the 1821 border. The artists successfully installed 47 obelisks in a vast landscape that encompasses the 2.1 million square kilometers of land ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the War between Mexico and the United States (1846-1848).
The first monument was placed on the Pacific coast near Brookings, Oregon, and the last at the mouth of the Sabina River, near Port Arthur, Texas. Cities and towns along the historic border include Brookings, OR; New Pine Creek, CA; Denio, NV; McDermitt, NV; Jackpot, NV; Medicine Bow, WY; Leadville, CO; Cañon City, CO; Pueblo, CO; The Board, CO; Syracuse, KS; Garden City, KS; Dodge City, KS; Texarkana, TX; Orange, TX; and Port Arthur, TX. All these cities and towns would have been frontier had the border remained as such.
The work of Ramírez and Taylor questions the immutability and permanence of the borders at a time when territorial entitlements are disputed around the world. By making the original border visible, they recognize the territory that Mexico lost and claim for the present. They do not necessarily challenge the current border, but insist on the recognition that the United States and Mexico have a complex and shared history and a common interest.
The monuments placed along the border of 1821 will remain for an indeterminate time, although they will undoubtedly be displaced and the marked line will vanish.
The project was commissioned as part of the Unsettled Landscapes exhibition of the Santa Fe Biennial SITE. Delimitations received generous support from the following institutions and individuals: The Art and Environment Center of the Nevada Museum of Art; Charles and Anne Bannon Horak; Codet Foundation; Institute of Cultural Research – UABC Museum, Art Museum Contemporary San Diego, California, James Robbins, Erica Torri and the University of Arizona.
The Office for Cultural Proyects (OPC) is proud to be coordinating the itinerary of the DeLIMITations exhibition as it will be traveling to the Museum of the Arts of the University of Guadalajara (MUSA) in February and to the Regional Museum of History of Colima in April.
Opening:
Saturday, October 7, 7PM
October 7, 2017 to January 13, 2018
Juárez 598, Centro, Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco
Marcos Ramírez ERRE.
Born in Tijuana in 1961, he obtained a Law Degree from the Autonomous University of Baja California in 1982. In 1983 he moved to the United States where he worked in the construction industry for 17 years. In 1989 –while maintaining his activity as a builder – he began his foray into the field of Visual Arts. He has participated in residencies, conferences and art exhibitions in countries such as Mexico, Canada, United States, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, France, Spain, Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Russia and China. Some of these international exhibitions such as Insite 94, Insite 97, the Sixth and Seventh Biennials of Havana, the 2000 Whitney Museum Biennial, the San Juan Puerto Rico and Caribbean Polygraphic Triennial, the Sao Paulo Biennial -Valencia, the Second Moscow Biennial, the California Biennial and the Zero One Biennial of Silicon Valley. As well as Made in California, Illuminated Mexico, Extrange New World, From Baja to Vancouver, Politics of Difference / Ibero-American Art at the end of the century, and ECO. Contemporary Mexican Art at the Reina Sofía and Crisisss Art Center Art and confrontation, Latin America, at the Palace of Fine Arts of Mexico among others. He has taught at the School of Art of the University of California at San Diego and at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia California. He received the United States Artist Fellowship in 2007 and since 2009 is a member of the National Creator System of Art. From 2003 to 2010 he founded Estación Tijuana (Tijuana Station), an alternative space where he developed a program on Art, Architecture, Urbanism and Popular Culture. In 2011 he presented a retrospective exhibition of 20 years of work entitled The Reconstruction of the Facts at the Carrillo Gil Museum in Mexico City.
David Taylor.
Taylor’s photographs, multimedia facilities and artist’s books have been exhibited at individual and group exhibitions at places such as Columbia College Contemporary Photography Museum, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, New Mexico Museum of Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art. Art of El Paso, Tx. Taylor’s work is in the permanent collections of Fidelity Investments, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tx., The Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Palace of Governors / Museum of History of New Mexico, among others. The New Yorker blog, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Orion magazine, PREFIX PHOTO, Fraction Magazine and the Mexico / Latin America issue of Esquire magazine have presented their images. Taylor’s continued examination of the United States / Mexico border was supported by a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2008. His monograph “Working the Line” was published by Radius Books in 2010 and has received numerous awards as “best book” as well as awards for excellence in design.
OPC, in association with the Instituto Vallartense de Cultura, are honored to present DeLIMITations: Mapping the border of 1821 between Mexico and the United States . . .
