USC_IML501_Dada Image Project

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I got the idea for this collage from Zadie Smith\u2019s essay \u201cFences: A Brexit Diary.\u201d Published in The New York Review of Books on August 18, 2016, the London-native\u2019s reflection on chaotic rupture in British society in the wake of the Brexit vote might have been rewritten word-for-word as am autopsy of the November 2016 election and its aftermath. Rereading Smith\u2019s piece in hindsight, her realization that she had been living behind a veil and her analysis of the suddenly apparent fracture between classes and across generations resonated afresh. I was particularly struck by the motif of fences that structures her essay. Opening with an anecdote about a fence built round her childhood school amidst gentrification, Smith goes on to consider less tangible fences formed by economic distance, racial prejudice, or words.

Much rhetoric, energy, and emotion have been spent on a proposed physical fence, a wall, erected along the U.S.-Mexico border. I chose the wall, or rather the idea of the wall, as my contemporary political figure for this project. Regardless of what does or does not get built, Smith\u2019s essay reminded me that fences have already been raised. Between people on either side of the political aisle, between working and upper classes, between family members and neighbors, there exists a seemingly impassible barrier to communication, to progress. Trump\u2019s bald declaration at an El Paso rally two days ago \u2014 that the wall is being built, when it is not \u2014 exemplifies the power of words to manifest barriers irrespective of material fact.

In the spirit of Berlin Dada, I cut up pieces of Smith\u2019s essay and pasted a fence of words in the forefront of my collage. Though various phrases are coherent, they have been randomly chopped and assembled so that any attempt to make cohesive meaning proves futile. I chose Smith\u2019s words in order to expose my initial inspiration, my impetus for production. Behind this fence, images, mostly from news stories about the border crisis, form a wall of sorts. I gesture towards the concept of borders with a vertical axis that cuts between mother and child, hands reaching, the center of a sculptural \u2018x\u2019, and tearful women embracing. This axis has been decentered to cultivate a sense of chaos rather than order or unity. Though the faceless border patrol agents and interspersion of surrealist textures and images appear unsettling, I realized, as I assembled the collage, that I had unwittingly also cut images of hope and connection. The girl in the bottom-left corner arrests the viewer\u2019s attention more so than any other image. She seems to look forward with fortitude more so than fear, and physical contact with her mother highlights images of compassion and intimacy elsewhere, resilient amidst chaotic rupture.

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