When construction on Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall began, an influx of public art followed. Graffiti artists began to ink up the walls, and performance artists were creating political art. French artist JR created a large paste-up mural of a boy peeking into America. The coffins hang from parts of the wall in Tijuana, while artists in Ciudad Juárez have created seesaws that cover both sides.
A Mexican-born artist preceded them all. Guillermo Gómez-Peña, an actor and performance writer, called the US-Mexico border “a space for cultural misunderstanding.” The artist, now 66, has been making border art since the 1980s, before it became popular.
In a new documentary about the artist called 100 Ways To Cross The BorderGómez-Peña told Dallas-based film director Amber Bemak: “The border became a space for the presentation of ideas and projects, then came the festivals that made the border some kind of hipster international space for art convention for safari tourists. ”
Which is accurate, honestly, even if no one else calls it that.
Gómez-Peña, who moved to the U.S. in 1995, and divided her time between San Francisco and Mexico City, has written 21 books about the cultural debate surrounding the culture of the U.S.-Mexico border. His best-known project is La Pocha Nostra, a politically-motivated performing arts group founded in 1993, that uses spoken word, performance, and installation art to tell borderline stories. Arguably, he was one of the first — if not the first — contemporary artists to use the US-Mexico border as a site for the performing arts, and his collective is known for “queering the border” as an actor considers himself peculiar and many art academics consider his work unique.
100 Ways To Cross The Border made its world debut at BAMcinemaFest in Brooklyn on June 25, and more screening dates are pending. The documentary often features the Tijuana-San Diego border; he shoots at San Diego’s Border Field State Park, as well as on the Nogales border with Arizona. It weaves into Gómez-Peña’s archival VHS footage from the 1990s, along with interviews with the artist and his collaborators. Bemak, the film director and an assistant professor of film and media arts at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts, recently spoke with Texas Observer about the project.
The Texas Observer: Why do you want to feature Guillermo Gómez-Peña?
Amber Bemak: I am a film professor, but my training is rooted in performance, because of my social circles. Guillermo is a multi-racial breeder. Number one is performance. I’m in a generation where we don’t have cell phones, but I want to make a film that expands his perspective, as an actor who has been active for over 40 years. Things are said now with urgency and freshness, Guillermo said those things in the 1980s. … The historical context can be motivating, healing and inspiring. His job does all that.
He talks about the US-Mexico border as a space for “hipster” art and “safari tourists,” what do you think about that?
He has a history of being the co-founder of Border Arts Workshop, an art collective that has run since 1984 until 1992. In some circles, he was known as the first artist on the border. He married the first wife through a chain-link fence … the couple traveled from one side of the border to the other to be with each other as a statement.
“He married his first wife through a chain-link fence.”
Is hot [part of the documentary] in Tucson, Arizona on the border with Nogales, Mexico. It’s scary to film there. My staff are all people of color, and not American. I felt protective of them, so tender. There was a militarized presence with helicopters. I hope that comes in the movie. There Guillermo performed radical art performances. When I went there to film, he didn’t want to go. It is said to be too triggering, space and military have become more locked. She is not comfortable. Many artists may, in the past, have created performance art on the border, but now, that is impossible. You can do nothing. Even with a camera is scary.
What’s intriguing about his work is his border art, and you use a lot of archival video. Didn’t he meet?
When I started making this film, I found out that not many people knew about him. The film speaks for itself on that front. He has been tokenized. He was the first Hispanic artist to receive a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1991. He received numerous awards, but [as] he says in the film, just up to here. You may be exoticized in a moment, but it’s not a sustainable thing. I found that to be true in his work.
You’ve lived in Dallas for the past six years, what do you think about art on the Texas border?
I think anything I say about the Texas border would be cliché and derivative. I think what is happening on the border is heartbreaking and ongoing. As someone who lives in Texas — don’t get me started — I think what’s happening at the border to people trying to cross here is inhumane. I don’t get much into that in the film. I carried it as far as I could. When it comes to Guillermo’s work, seeing the same sentences read about the boundary he wrote 30 years ago has something to say. Watch him talk about the border then and now [are] different stories but much of the same injustice.
Did Guillermo trust you with the authorship of his story? There were a few instances where he turned the camera on you, the director.
That’s a theme in my work, in general. I’ve been making movies for 24 years. I am interested in the ethics of representation. It doesn’t really feel without a bit of tension, which puts ourselves as real. What does white lesbian mean [originally] from Massachusetts who will make this film about a brown, [queer], old man? What is that? Identity is a big part of our interests. The main conversation that weaves into the whole [in the kitchen space] between Guillermo and me continued. Seems like the best we shot. It’s a performative, [a] real way to lift the complexity around the situation.
You not only interviewed the artist, but her collaborators — many female artists, such as a performance artist who was a sex worker and did a pole dance on the border.
It happened in 2017. What I want to do with this film, is I’m a feminist and I believe in the collective. I don’t want to make a film about an individual male artist. I wanted to de-center the idea. He works together. I want to show her life and who is around her. That can also be someone’s story.
In the film, Guillermo often criticizes you because you don’t understand what performance art is.
[laughs] I wanted to include more of that because the film asks, “what’s the performance?” There is fascinating political art in Mexico, Venezuela, and Columbia today. He’s a lineage holder for political art in America, and it’s still strong. Mexico City has a lot of modern art.Was political art well received in Dallas?
I don’t know, I’ve lived there for six years. If you want to make gay art it’s a rainbow, I don’t know what to say about what’s going on. Many alternative art spaces in Dallas showcasing interesting work have closed around the city after fire marshals closed some art venues. This is a limited area to see spaces.
Where did the title of the movie come from?
He chose, he asked me: “What is it 100 Ways To Cross The Border? ” This is a great description of his work. Not just one way, there’s the way of humor, anger, performance, and nostalgia. Then there are all the ways of crossing the border, by plane, by walking, with your own body, just like everyone else. It feels like a real entirety of his work.
In the film, Guillermo talks about “radical citizenship,” in which he talks about “living every day as if there were no human rights laws and constitutions.” What does it feel like to take him in these moments?
I see Guillermo as a philosopher before he was an actor. He spoke the word and wrote many books. He is a cultural voice. That part of his work was not performative. I wanted to include as much of his writing as possible in the film. He talks a lot about the border as a shifting area. He’s so prolific, like what would you choose to include? Much of your work in life takes a long time, and we should all continue to strive.
