Bodies, Boundaries, and Borderlands: The Work of Fidencio Fifield-perez and David Taylor

The topography of the land becomes the topography of the body in the work of Fidencio Fifield-perez and David Taylor. Both artists investigate the psychic and physical borderlands of the United States and Mexico through different approaches. Taylor’s work at first reads as objective and panoramic, with straightforward images of the land, the machinery, and the people of the borderlands. Perez, on the other hand, mines his personal experience as a DREAMER, with dreamlike collage and the intimacy of personal objects. Yet, in both artists’ work, the distinctions between the intimate and the panoramic, the body and the system, start to shift and blur. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Perez writes, “The moment I was smuggled into this country at the age of seven, my body ceased to be my own.” In Perez’s work, bodies are made of layered maps, claimed by their multiple territories. The broken lines holding figures together are both fragile and vital, snaking through limbs like veins. In some images, maps morph into native icons or fences, imagery that suggests both the possibilities and limits of mixed cultural identity. In “Clandestino,” the bare body inked with Mesoamerican iconography flaunts its otherness. This self-mapping reads as a defiant gesture within a system where immigrants like Perez must report to the government every two years to be put through a series of biometric measurements. In his most recent work, Perez transforms envelopes from his correspondence with immigration agencies into small paintings of potted cacti and succulents. The plants depicted are his own—reminders of home that he and his partner bring with them on their travels. The envelopes reference ex-votos, religious paintings made to celebrate miracles. In this case, the miracles are those of the art itself. The small paintings celebrate the art of making a home within one’s art—a home as portable as a potted succulent, a home that must survive uprooting. Next to Perez’s work, David Taylor’s series of photographs Working the Line seems to pan outward and back. His forty-two photos record life in U.s./mexico borderlands, from San Diego/tijuana to El Paso/juarez. In an intro to the work, Taylor tells us the borderlands are already under constant surveillance “with apparatus that range from simple tire drags (that erase footprints allowing fresh evidence of crossing to