From Public Delivery:
“Her piece, Erasing the Border, is one of her most commanding works in which, alongside several other artists, residents, students and activists, she led an attack against the Mexico-US border wall, with the goal of “erasing” sections of the border. Sections of the fence were painted by Fernández to match the vast sky so that when viewed from afar, there is the illusion of gaps in the fence. This appearance of a broken link, a useless border, is an effective statement on the arbitrary concept of borders separating place from place.
Fernández has been erasing the border wall in her series of installations “Borrando la Frontera” (Erasing the Border), beginning in 2011, where she erased a wall in Tijuana, Baja California. Before this, she did a series of performance pieces near the border. She chose to use her art to breakdown the jail bars that impeded the sight of those in the border town by allowing people to see what it would look like if the bars didn’t run down the beach breaking up the scenery. From a distance, the landscape is continuous, not broken apart by the intrusive fence.
As word of her work began to spread, more and more artists, locals, and border organizations wanted to be part of her project. They, too, wanted to make a statement and wanted to see the sections of border fences erased in Texas and Arizona. Texas and Arizona were politically charged sites in particular as they have recently passed a series of severe anti-immigration laws and vigilante militias enacting violence and inciting fear at the border.”
The project is ongoing and people from communities on both sides of the border have joined Fernandez to help erase it.
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