One of the artists and co-curators had an idea for an art exhibition about International Friendship Park, a state park on the westernmost end of the U.S.-Mexico border when it opened in 1971 as a meeting place for friends and family on each side of the border to connect through a fence.
On the Mexico side, the space remains open to the public, but closed on the U.S. side in 2020, according to the Friends of International Friendship Park, an advocacy organization working to reopen access to the park and promoting improved relations along the border. It was an idea that fit with an art exhibition series from another curator about third spaces, philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s concept about the production of space in a way that is symbolic and can be used to challenge systems of power.
Sara Solaimani and Natalia Ventura have brought together three artist collectives for “Occupy Thirdspace III: The Park,” to visually tell the story of International Friendship Park. Las Comadres, Art Made Between Opposite Sides (AMBOS), and Friends of International Friendship Park share their perspective by way of their work and connection with the site.
“Third spaces are the beds of life, culture, and community. In San Diego, we have long known the suppression of third spaces, from the longstanding struggle for Chicano Park to the recent years of Friendship Park’s closure. In the past year alone, we’ve experienced major budget cuts to libraries and new parking costs to visit Balboa Park,” Ventura, the multimedia artist and organizer whose idea it was to focus on the park, said in a statement. “This exhibition shows us that no matter the circumstances, and especially in times of suppression, we must find creative ways to claim and uphold third spaces—where the true San Diego is found.”
Solaimani, a professor of art history and of Chicano studies at local colleges and universities, displayed the first installment of her “Occupy Thirdspaces” series in 2014, demonstrating how much the arts community in San Diego had to learn from the artists and practices in Tijuana. With this latest show, it was important to stay true to Ventura’s original goal of showcasing the legacy of collectives in transborder art practices.
“The collectives in this exhibition practice from the common understanding that from Palestine to Tijuana and across the border between the looters and the looted, no one should have to navigate spaces of apartheid marked by walls and fences for a chance to be with their loved ones. No one should have to risk death to belong where their labor is the backbone of the economy, and no one is illegal on stolen land,” Solaimani said. “Here at the border, we ground abstractions like the third space in collective action. Transborder art practices emerge from the ground—not from the ivory tower.”
Solaimani took some time to talk about the show, which opens Tuesday at San Diego’s Central Library with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m., and the interrogation of third spaces. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: “Occupy Thirdspace III: The Park,” is the third in a series of exhibitions you’ve curated around this theme of third spaces. Can you give us a bit of background on how the first “Occupy Thirdspace” came together and why you chose this focus?
A: This first “Occupy Thirdspace” in 2014, I had a lineup of the most well-known artists from Tijuana because I had spent time in their studios and in their homes. After I spent time and did studio visits with all of the artists, I thought about a title for the show and it was this idea of occupying the third space, a theory from academic work. It’s an academic discourse that culminated in this book that was published in 2003 by Michael Dear, who’s a scholar, and Gustavo Leclerc. It was a book called “Postborder City” and it was an anthology. They brought together a lot of different theorists from the ivory tower to write about how Tijuana and San Diego is this post-border city, and arts and cultural practices have erased and kind of deleted the border, metaphorically. That art can erase the border; through art practice, we can imagine a space in which the border no longer exists, and then we can start to see the border as an imaginary line. So, we can imagine a world in which the border doesn’t exist.
While I agree that it’s important to imagine that, I disagreed on the point that art could erase borders. I disagree with the positionality of being like, ‘Oh, we can make these art pieces, and we are therefore living in a post-border city, and this is a region that is totally fluid and interdependent.’ We’re erasing the conflict and the strife and the struggle, and it’s disrespectful to say that. It’s just not true. I came to the conclusion, from a lot of my research and from reading accounts from a lot of artists and art historians whose positions I really respected, that art kind of creates these temporary jurisdictions and we can occupy that third space theory, that academic theory that’s sort of overshadowing these ephemeral, everyday practices that are happening on the border. These collectives (in this show) are making work and exhibiting it—despite lack of funding, despite lack of infrastructure, despite lack of attention from the north. They’re writing about their own work, curating their own work, just practicing in a way that’s completely opposite than a lot of artists north of the border. Not waiting for permission, not waiting for funds, not waiting for it to become possible, but rather just making it possible and doing it themselves by wearing all the different hats and not taking no for an answer.
“This practice, which is akin to a term called “rasquache,” which is a Chicano sensibility of creativity as a means for survival, we can see that in a much deeper, more developed and nuanced way in the practice of Tijuana artists. My colleagues at UCSD got to exhibit alongside mid-career Tijuana artists and learn about their practices, learn about how they don’t wait for permission or funding or anything to be able to just pop up a show. They learned a lot of different exhibition and curatorial skills from these artists. They learned Spanish. They learned how the most well-known Tijuana artists have this practice of completely putting their ego aside and helping one another and working within the collective because it’s in the very fiber of their being. It’s a cultural practice, so it was a really cool experience.”
Q: Why is collective artwork is such an important part of transborder art practice?
A: I think, when we think about the era of late capitalism, the context is that everything in North America is a market. The Western/Northern perspective is viewed as this interdependent economic relationship between us, Mexico, and Canada; on the ground, free trade is everything but free, and it’s exploiting and hurting a lot of people, especially in Mexico. So, when it comes to any kind of land use, of community practices, Mexico has a legacy of collective land use, of collective practices, of shared responsibility, and that is a very important tradition of Latin America that also comes from a socialist perspective. Governing structures, practices of the people, the local community and their collective efforts for building up their communities and making sure everyone thrives, is the responsibility of everyone. For example, the Promotora model, where you have volunteers from the community getting up and organizing the people, doing political organization and learning skills that they never knew before, to go and march on city hall and demand that the city provide them with services. They’re the ones that are working at the maquiladoras-the assembly factories-and on whose backs our economy is riding, so this idea of the collective and where it comes from, the land use, from the ejidos (areas of communal land use in Mexico) all the way up to art practice that is informed by those alternative economies, it’s very important in Tijuana. That’s the site where the first-world rubs up against the third-world. Gloria Anzaldua said, “The border is an open wound. The First World grates against the Third World and it bleeds.” It’s an open wound that bleeds, so collective practice and collective making practices are very important to ensure the survival of everyone, and that everyone thrives. It has just always been a really important legacy. The practice of art collective, since the 1980s, has become a legacy in Tijuana art history. Collectives such as El Nopal Centenario, Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo, Las Comadres. In Tijuana, you had many collectives that were not officially recognized as collectives, but were practicing art in this social community way where they actually had spaces that they all lived in together.
Q: Can you share some examples from the show that reflect this “visual story of public and collective land use,” particularly through the site of Friendship Park?
A: The Friends of Friendship Park collective has made a series of papier-mache puppets through their workshops. One example of their puppets is the eagle and the condor that are from an origin story, many different Native American origin stories that talk about where the eagle and the condor meet as being the homeland of their ancestry of the indigenous people. We have mostly a lot of durational performances where Las Comadres have been involved in a lot of counter protests since the ‘80s, against groups that organized events like Light Up the Border or American Spring, where there were ultra right-wing groups and white supremacist groups that were holding these demonstrations at the border as it was becoming increasingly militarized. In 1992 or 1994, these years when, ironically, the North American Free Trade Agreement was being signed, there was also a ramping up of border security infrastructure and militarization of the border. So, Las Comadres showed up and did counter protests to these groups and was documenting all of this. At the time, Friendship Park is the site where families could go and meet one another. It opened in 1971 and people could go and spend time and see one another, even if they couldn’t cross the border, and actually embrace and be together. Friendship Park provided opportunities for families to reunite and at least see one another across the border. With the closure of Friendship Park and the increasing replacement of fences with longer and bigger and taller and less permeable walls, the Friends of Friendship Park have continued to show up at the site and do performances using their protest banners, their puppets, and other objects that they’ve made.
Q: A 2023 article from the University of Chicago talks about Ray Oldenburg’s definition of third places and how they allow people to affirm identities and build empathy for identities that are different from our own. What kind of identity building do you think Friendship Park was able to contribute during the time that it was first built and operational?
A: Third space is a theoretical concept. Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja have taken this concept and developed it, as a concept and as a theory within academia, and applied it to different concrete examples of spaces, showing how space is constructed. There are different levels of space, and it’s a construct-it’s what we see, what we know and think about a space, how we live and experience the space. It’s a theory that deconstructs our idea of space that has been applied to the understanding of the border, starting in the early 2000s as an academic trend.
(Oldenburg), I think that’s an extension of the same concept. For those who want to learn about the other side, it’s an opportunity for encounter. The border space, the geopolitics of the border, and the way that the border is configured is very uneven. It’s a space of uneven development, and that is because it’s a hegemony; the United States is the hegemon of Mexico, so one of the main questions we’re asking the public, and that I’ve been asking the public, is, “Do you really live on a border?” We’re the same distance, technically, from the border on both sides, in both cities. But for Tijuana, the border wall, the border fence, has been the fourth wall of people’s homes; whereas on the north side, there’s a huge buffer zone-it’s for the Border Patrol’s private roads, it’s for shaving off topsoil and filling in canyons to create flat land to build security infrastructure. There’s the quote, unquote Border Field State Park, which is a protected habitat. It’s a state park, and state parks and state beaches and national parks are protected environments under the guise of conservation and environmentalism. These spaces are not to be traversed, so we have a huge buffer zone in the north and people don’t approach the border from the north, they don’t look to the other side. They don’t cross nearly as much, so are we really living on a border?
If you take an aerial view and look down at the border, you’ll see all this occupation of the border on the south side. You’ll see people living in the border space right up to the wall on the south side, whereas on the north side, you see just huge open, unused land, and that’s for law enforcement-Border Patrol, ICE, security infrastructure. People aren’t encouraged or allowed, or need, to cross the border from the north side. Friendship Park is an opportunity to go and see the other side. It’s an opportunity to actually live like you’re living on a border. I think that’s what it provides for people who want to be allies, to go and see how this is the best option for a home away from home, for people who can’t be in the comfort of their own home together with their family members because the border prevents them from crossing from the north. They may lose their ability to cross back over if they leave, and it prevents members from crossing from the south because they have to risk their lives to do that. So, Friendship Park allows the opportunity, not only for people to at least be able to look at their family members and even touch pinkies through the fence before it was shut down, but also for others to be able to come and learn what it actually looks like to occupy a border, to live on a border, to see the other side. I think that’s how it provides a third space opportunity. We need to understand the struggle on the border in order to fully get what third space means in Tijuana and San Diego art. If art had the power to erase borders, Friendship Park would never have been closed down. What we are able to provide are these temporary jurisdictions where our imagination can show us a different possible outcome, a different possible future, and different potentials that we haven’t met yet.