How avant­garde Japanese artists foundinspiration in Tijuana

Members of the avant­garde artist collective, Chim Pom, pose for a photograph near the U.S. border wall in a tree house theycall USA Visitor's Center in Tijuana's Colonia Libertad. (David Maung /)By Sandra Dibble

JANUARY 13, 2017, 7:15 PMT|TIJUANA

he U.S. border’s double­fence is simply part of the scenery for residents of an impoverishedsection of Tijuana’s Colonia Libertad. For the Japanese artist collective Chim Pom, thislandscape of unpaved roads and small shacks pressed up against the international boundary line
poses profound questions.
Known for provocative themes and unusual settings, the six­member group has built a wood tree­house in Tijuana overlooking the U.S.­Mexico border, and labeled it “USA Visitor Center,” filling itwith items that include a coyote skin, a shelf with American classics such as “Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn” and an image of a $5 bill with the face of Donald Trump.
On Thursday, before returning to Tokyo, the group installed a second piece: a plastic crossemblazoned with the word, “Libertad,” and set on a trash­filled strip across the primary fence on U.S.

territory, near a hole on the Mexican side that represents a clandestine tunnel. “Libertad” symbolizes
just the opposite: the burial of liberty.
“This area is very crazy area,” said Ryuta Ushiro, leader of Chim Pom, which celebrated its eleventh
anniversary last year. “This is the most important area to think about freedom — and it’s completely
not freedom.”
Both barrier and political symbol, the U.S.­Mexico border and its infrastructure over the years has
been the subject of some unusual artistic expression.
In 1997, Tijuana artist Marcos Ramírez, known as Erre, built a 33­foot Trojan horse that wasdisplayed amid the car lanes leading to the San Ysidro Port of Entry as part of the periodic InSITE
exhibition.
In 2005, the border at Playas de Tijuana was the setting for a performance piece by the Venezuela
artist Javer Téllez that culminated with a human cannonball propelled across the border fence atPlayas de Tijuana.
Last February, a Palestinian artist, Khaled Jarrar, took a piece of the border fence between Tijuana
and San Diego and used it to fashion a symbolic ladder set in Mexico across the border fence fromTexas.
Chim Pom’s pieces are both artwork and progressive social commentary — and the location is part oftheir message. The group’s previous works include “Don’t follow the Wind”, set inside the radioactive
exclusion zone of Japan’s 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear disaster. Another project, a performancepiece, involved taking Louis Vuitton handbags to Cambodia and blowing them up using cleared landmines.
The artists focus on video, installations and performances, and for all the gravity of their subjects,
they present themselves as merry, and at times mischievous. Though primarily known in Japan, they
have been commanding international attention, with pieces exhibited in at London’s Saatchi Gallery
and New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.
“Chim Pom wields irreverence like a weapon to shield what is, in fact, a deadly serious message,”according to Artscape Japan, an English­language web magazine that focuses on the country’s art
scene.
Chim Pom’s members first came to Tijuana last summer, and returned in December, spending a totalof two months in the city. They said they have felt warmly received, loved the tacos and at Christmas
dressed up as Santa Claus to deliver Japanese gifts to children in Colonia Libertad.
Their project has come as the U.S. president­elect has vowed to build a continuous wall on southernborder and said Mexico will pay for it. Chim Pom’s members say their fascination with the border andits contradictions had a different origin: An incident involving their only female member, Ellie, thatended with her being banned from entering the United States.
Ellie, who uses only her first name, was traveling to Hawaii with a Japanese television crew, one ofwhose members had previously jokingly identified himself as having had connections with a terrorist
organization, the group said. As a result, they said that he and several others in the crew—including
Ellie­­ were barred from entering the United States.
Ellie’s experience inspired a 2014 piece by the collective, COYOTE, which involved the use of video
and Skype with a gallery in New York City, as she could not be there in person. The two Tijuanapieces, “USA Visitors Center” and “LIBERTAD” complete the series.
Set between the two border fences, “the cross is the proof of death of liberty in the area created byAmerican government,” Ushiro said.
Chim Pom’s search for a setting at the border last year ended when members came upon a crude self­
built house where Ester Arias Medina lives near a U.S. boundary marker with her grandchildren — up
to nine at a time. “I’ve never seen such a fascinating house,” Ushiro said. “They are using the borderas their own wall.”
The artists asked Arias if they could build a tree house in her pepper tree and she said yes. She felt
sad about Ellie’s inability to legally enter the United States, a condition shared by many residents ofher Tijuana neighborhood. “More than anything we were moved by the girl’s story,” Arias said.
Known for its smuggling activity, residents of this area of Colonia Libertad are used to the sounds offootsteps at night — and that of saws cutting through the secondary border fence. But Arias says she
focuses on her home and her family, on feeding the grandchildren that love the new tree house in theyard.
Chim Pom’s members say the area prompts questions. The tree house looking down on the borderwall asks, “What is America, what is the border?” the artists wrote in a proposal. They had planned tobuild a tunnel that emerged on the U.S. side, but the structure was scaled back to end underground at
the border, the dirt embedded with Ellie’s footprints, simulating an image of man’s first steps on themoon.
For border residents, Chim Pom’s piece is a reminder of the region’s unique location, “thecoexistence of two cultures, which generates diversity, contrasting ideas and energies,” said Arturo
Rodríguez, owner of Tijuana’s La Caja Galeria.
In Japan, a country with no land borders, members of Chim Pom hope to confront audiences with adifferent reality with this latest piece.
“Most Japanese people don’t know about the border problem between the United States and Mexico,”Ushiro said, adding that “this is really an international problem.”sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com@sandradibble

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This article is related to: Art, Arts and Culture, U.S.­Mexico Border