A Visual Survey of the Border Security State
When
Where
The Center for Latin American Studies is partnering with the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry this fall to host the Charlas con Café Speaker Series – a weekly space to hear lectures from a wide variety of experts and discuss topics relevant to the Latin American region, Fridays from 1-2 pm (unless otherwise specified).
Coffee & snacks at 12:30pm!
COMPLEX: A Visual Survey of the Border Security State presents recent work by David Taylor, marking the latest chapter in his two-decade chronicle of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Through a visual investigation of surveillance infrastructure, detention centers, and militarized landscapes, Taylor frames the border not as a fixed line, but as a manufactured, ever-expanding system of control—engineered by private industry and sanctioned through state power.
This work positions border infrastructure within the visual and symbolic language of monuments and memorials, suggesting that what we build reveals our national priorities. In doing so, COMPLEX examines the border security industrial complex as both a physical reality and a conceptual framework—one that perpetuates itself through escalating measures in the name of “operational control.” Ultimately, Taylor’s survey renders visible the scale, logic, and human cost of a system that has come to define American geography, policy, and identity.
David Taylor is a professor at the College of Arts at the U of A, his artwork examines place, territory, history and politics. Exhibited internationally, his projects reveal how borders can function not only as spatial demarcations, but also as an amplifying device particularly attuned to geo-political, environmental and social conditions. Pursuing projects that chronicle the changing circumstances of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, he was awarded a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship and has released two monographs–Working the Line (Radius Books, 2010) and Monuments: 276 Views of the United States – Mexico Border (Radius Books and Nevada Museum of Art, 2015). His artwork is in the permanent collections of numerous institutions including the Nevada Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the New Mexico Museum of Art and the MFA Houston. Widely published, Taylor’s projects have been featured in outlets such as Art LTD., The Guardian, The New Yorker blog, Politico, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Places Journal, PREFIX PHOTO, Fraction Magazine, the Mexico/Latin America Edition of Esquire Magazine and Arquine. Exhibition venues include the The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, the MCA San Diego, the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington DC, Museo de las Artes Universidad de Guadalajara, Oficina de Proyectos Culturales, MFA Houston, Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Boise Art Museum.