Tanya Aguiñiga

In this performance, Aguiñiga uses a shirt to, as the title suggests, grapple the fence at Playas de Tijuana physically, but also to  signify  both sides of the border while unveiling what the two sides of her identity represent. Aguiñiga states, “My impotent and shaky grip attempt to reconcile the work we are doing with AMBOS and take ownership of this physical and emotional space. The border fence, especially this particular stretch of fence, has haunted my memories, as it was absent most of my childhood and left a marked scar on my small town of Playas de Tijuana when it was installed. The fence is a permanent reminder that we are not wanted, that we are less than, that we are what gets filtered out. It is a stigma we invisibly carry the rest of our lives, as we find our place in the world navigating the liminal.”

AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides) was founded by Tanya Aguiñiga. This project was born out of the need to use her skills to address the ongoing issues that her family and community face where she grew up. Aguiñiga was raised in Tijuana, México where the border fence cuts into the ocean. She crossed the border every day for 14 years to get an education in the US. Additionally, her formative years as an artist were spent as part of the Border Arts Workshop, a community of artists that addressed border issues. There she helped found a community center in an autonomous land-squat run by indigenous women in the outskirts of Tijuana. 

After leaving the Border Arts workshop, Tanya connected with communities in need that were different from her own. She worked with indigenous communities in Chiapas and Oaxaca, native peoples in Alaska and underserved urban communities in Los Angeles. Yet, the experience of growing up as a binational citizen kept coming back to her work. This experience is not unique to her, and she wanted to give a voice to the community that continues to cross daily despite stigma and discrimination. Thus, AMBOS was born. 

AMBOS Project started as a month long activation at the San Ysidro border crossing in Tijuana, but has evolved its focus to record and paint a picture of what life looks like along the length of the US/Mexico border for those who are unfamiliar with the realities that take place there. Through the different phases of the project, AMBOS has fostered a greater sense of interconnectedness in the border regions it has visited. AMBOS as a project has become multi-faceted. It is part documentation of the border, part collaboration with artists, part community activism, part exploration of identities influenced by the liminal zone of the borderlands.

By connecting with local artists, activists, and makers in the border region, AMBOS is working to capture an accurate representation of the sister cities and communities on both sides. In making community-based art, AMBOS also functions as an emotional thermometer to gauge the health of policy and transnational relationships in each community. AMBOS seeks to generate healthier cross-border relationships between communities and governmental bodies by raising awareness of issues and opinion in the border region and amplifying them to an international audience. Through these efforts, AMBOS recontextualizes and calls attention to the importance and lack of accessibility at US borders. Using craft and art as a vehicle for community self-care, this project is aimed at humanizing the act of border crossing.