Graffiti On The Mexico-U.S. Border Wall

Malise Ruthven writes: ‘The eight prototypes of the wall that Donald Trump wants to build between the US and Mexico stand in San Diego like the mysterious monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—sentinels guarding the border. Their powers must be extraterrestrial, since no merely human structures can be expected to kill the spirit of hope—or desperation—that drives so many people to risk their lives on the road to El Norte. Christoph Büchel, an artist of Swiss-Finnish parentage who now lives in Iceland, has cheekily proposed that the prototypes be designated a US national monument and protected from demolition as objects of “significant cultural value” under the 1906 Antiquities Act. “This is a collective sculpture,” he says. The prototypes are, as The New York Times paraphrased his view, “an unintended

sculpture garden willed into existence by the president and his supporters.” Even if the border wall is never built, says Büchel, the sample sections “need to be preserved because they can signify and change meaning through time.”’

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