Tanya Aguiñiga

Nowhere in the United States is more politicized than the country’s border with Mexico, despite the fact that few Americans actually spend much time there. Tanya Aguiñiga, though, has deep experience with the place. She can amply attest to how violently this imaginary line on the earth’s surface cuts through real people’s lives. While growing up, Aguiñiga lived in Mexico but attended school in America, and thus was obliged to wait for hours each day on either side of the border. The sheer time wasted enduring such situations is heartbreaking; the separation, anger, and resentment that arise from this highly contested boundary are worse.

Aguiñiga has repeatedly circled back to these formative experiences, working in the early part of her career with the collaborative group AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides, and in Spanish “both of us”) on either side of the border. She also has a fluid relationship to media, incorporating expressive materials as diverse as wax, charred wood, natural fibers, and human hair in her work. The wall-mounted sculpture seen here, part of her series Vestigial, harks back to the glory days of fiber art in the 1960s and ’70s. It is embellished with a highly unusual combination of substances, equal parts earth and glamor: Mylar, gold leaf, and self-drying clay.

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