CIUDAD JUÁREZ | A Quebec artist collects clothes abandoned by migrants on the border between the United States and Mexico to raise awareness of their plight through her work.
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“It’s a way of approaching all sorts of issues: territory, migration, the body, rights of way, exploitation…”, explains Christine Brault, an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal.
The idea came to him during a trip to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico last year, when the city was experiencing another wave of migration.
To his surprise, the asylum seekers got rid of practically all their possessions before going to the border authorities, near the Rio Grande, which separates the two countries.
Photo Nora T. Lamontagne
All along the border, we see pieces of abandoned clothing.
“There was a big container and I saw people throwing away their backpacks, a good part of their clothes and their shoes,” recalls the doctoral candidate in arts studies and practices at UQAM. These items are then burned, as far as she knows.
“I started thinking about where people came from, but also where their clothes came from. Clothes circulate very easily, unlike people, not to mention the exploitation of those who make them.”
- Listen to the interview with Nora T. Lamontagne, journalist for the Journal de Montréal-Journal de Québec on QUB radio:
In the field
Back in Mexico these days, to give creative workshops, Christine Brault has started collecting the clothes that litter the 100 m on the Mexican side of the border. She has a bag of them so far.
Photo Nora T. Lamontagne
Christine Brault carries the bag of clothes she plans to use in a work about migration.
She plans to wash the pieces, make them into flags, and eventually integrate them into an installation for her doctorate. And, who knows, to travel the exhibition and the clothes that could not cross the border with their owner.
The performance artist sees several parallels between Ciudad Juárez and Montreal, which she describes as “border cities”.
“The border between Canada and the United States is invisible, it has no wall, but it can also be dangerous and conflictual,” adds the one who has also been a francization teacher for 15 years.
Cross-border art
Christine Brault recently performed a poetic performance that connects the two borders.
Last fall, she and a collaborator sowed milkweed seeds in a field of corn, these plants “which attract monarchs, migratory butterflies”, at the Canadian border of Frelighsburg.
Photo Nora T. Lamontagne
Brenda Ceniceros (left) and Christine Brault sow milkweed seeds during a performance on the sidelines of the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
The same scene was repeated this Saturday, in Ciudad Juárez, on the arid ground which characterizes the desert which borders the northern border of Mexico. “It was the same seeds, from the same harvest,” she says with a smile.
– With the collaboration of Itzel Aguilera