STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
“When I was small (crossing the border) was an exciting adventure…Now I have fear & uneasiness knowing that … I or someone I know may be detained or worse,” wrote one resident of Cuidad Juarez.
“I feel sadness (when crossing the border.) I moved to El Paso because the connected communities of El Paso and Juarez were so vibrant. Now, the enforced separation lessens both cities, and there is a greyness father than multi-colors,” wrote a resident of El Paso.
“We want respect (because we are human just like them,)” wrote a resident of Ciudad Juarez who crosses the border to work in the United States.
These are just a few of the thoughts shared by Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, residents on Post-it notes during the creation of an art project titled AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides). They and others can be read at the Sun Valley Museum of Art in Ketchum as part of the museum’s Intertwined Weaving exhibition.
The Museum will offer a free tour of the exhibition at 5:30 p.m. tonight—Thursday, June 13. The free exhibition runs through Friday, June 15, at 191 5th St. E., in Ketchum.
The exhibition features the work of a Native American tribal member from Oregon and Mexican-American artists as it considers ways artists use traditional weaving as platforms for activism.
The artists involved with AMBOS engaged local adults and children as they held two workshops to show how to incorporate embroidered patches made by asylum seekers and refugees at the border into tapestries that will be given to The Advocates and The Hunger Coalition.
Artist Natalie M. Godinez said AMBOS was created from 2016 to 2018 to give people a platform to express their views after President Trump began railing against those crossing the border into the United States.
“We go back and forth because it’s cheaper to live in Mexico and cross the border every day to work,” she said. “Each person we recruited tied one knot. A lot of people said, ‘I don’t know how to do it.’ We looked at them and said, ‘Look, you tied your shoes today. You can do this.’ “
The idea of bringing the project here is to build bridges, not only across borders but across the Wood River Valley community, said Ava Scanlan, spokesperson for SVMoA.
“There are a lot of people who have migrated here from Mexico and Latin America, and this invites residents of this community to come together for each other and to care for one another and our community,” she added.