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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>, 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<\/a>, philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre\u2019s concept about the production of space in a way that is symbolic and can be used to challenge systems of power.<\/p>\n Sara Solaimani<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Natalia Ventura<\/a>\u00a0have brought together\u00a0three\u00a0artist collectives for\u00a0\u201cOccupy Thirdspace III: The Park,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to visually tell the story of International Friendship Park. Las\u00a0Comadres,\u00a0Art Made Between Opposite Sides (AMBOS)<\/a>, and\u00a0Friends of International Friendship Park\u00a0share their perspective by way of their work\u00a0and connection with the site.<\/p>\n \u201cThird 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\u2019s closure. In the past year alone, we\u2019ve experienced major budget cuts to libraries and new parking costs to visit Balboa Park,\u201d Ventura, the multimedia artist and organizer whose idea it was to focus on the park, said in a statement. \u201cThis 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\u2014where the true San Diego is found.\u201d<\/p>\n Solaimani, a professor of art history and of Chicano studies at local colleges and universities, displayed the first installment of her \u201cOccupy Thirdspaces\u201d 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\u2019s original goal of showcasing the legacy of collectives in transborder art practices.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d Solaimani said. \u201cHere at the border, we ground abstractions like the third space in collective action. Transborder art practices emerge from the ground\u2014not from the ivory tower.\u201d<\/p>\n Solaimani took some time to talk about the show, which opens Tuesday at San Diego\u2019s 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. )<\/p>\n Q:<\/strong> \u201cOccupy Thirdspace III: The Park,\u201d is the third in a series of exhibitions you\u2019ve curated around this theme of third spaces. Can you give us a bit of background on how the first \u201cOccupy Thirdspace\u201d came together and why you chose this focus?<\/p>\n A:\u00a0<\/strong>This first \u201cOccupy Thirdspace\u201d 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\u2019s an academic discourse that culminated in this book that was published in 2003 by Michael Dear, who\u2019s a scholar, and Gustavo Leclerc. It was a book called \u201cPostborder City\u201d 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\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n While I agree that it\u2019s important to imagine that, I disagreed on the point that art could erase borders. I disagree with the positionality of being like, \u2018Oh, 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.\u2019 We\u2019re erasing the conflict and the strife and the struggle, and it\u2019s disrespectful to say that. It\u2019s 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\u2019s sort of overshadowing these ephemeral, everyday practices that are happening on the border. These collectives (in this show) are making work and exhibiting it\u2014despite lack of funding, despite lack of infrastructure, despite lack of attention from the north. They\u2019re writing about their own work, curating their own work, just practicing in a way that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThis practice, which is akin to a term called \u201crasquache,\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019s in the very fiber of their being. It\u2019s a cultural practice, so it was a really cool experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0<\/strong>Why is collective artwork is such an important part of transborder art practice?<\/p>\n A:\u00a0<\/strong>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\u2019s 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\u2019re 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\u2019s very important in Tijuana. That\u2019s the site where the first-world rubs up against the third-world. Gloria Anzaldua said, \u201cThe border is an open wound. The First World grates against the Third World and it bleeds.\u201d It\u2019s 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<\/a>, Border Art Workshop\/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo<\/a>, Las Comadres<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0<\/strong>Can you share some examples from the show that reflect this \u201cvisual story of public and collective land use,\u201d particularly through the site of Friendship Park?<\/p>\n A:\u00a0<\/strong>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 \u201880s, 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\u2019t 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\u2019ve made.<\/p>\n