C AR OL INA A. M IR AN D A

As Trump talks building awall, a Japanese artcollective's Tijuana
treehouse peeks acrossthe border
By CA R OLINA A . M I RA ND A
JA N 2 3 , 20 17 |TIJ U A N A

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A view of the treehouse built by Japanese art collective Chim Pom on the Tijuana side ofthe U.S.­Mexico border wall. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)As treehouses go, this one offers unparalleled views. To the north are thescrub­covered slopes of the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge. To thesouth are the ramshackle constructions of Tijuana's Colonia Libertadneighborhood, with its tire retaining walls and patchwork roofs ofcorrugated tin. Stretching into the horizon to the west is roughly sevenmiles of undulating steel border wall separating Mexico from the UnitedStates.
The U.S.­Mexico border is no ordinary place. And this is no ordinarytreehouse. It is a work of art built by a collective of Japanese artists known
as Chim Pom. The backyard treehouse, on the Tijuana side of theborder, also functions as a wry viewpoint over one of the most politicizedborders in the world.
"It's our art," said Ryuta Ushiro, a member of the collective, "but it's alsofor children."
The installation couldn’t be more timely. Newly inaugurated President
Donald Trump has made building a wall on the U.S.­Mexico border a highpriority — mentioning it Jan. 11 during his first official news conference inmonths, when he told reporters, “I want to get the wall started.”Looking north toward the United States from Chim Pom's border treehouse, toward afenced area protected by the U.S. Border Patrol. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los AngelesTimes)

But the wall remains controversial. Only 37% of Americans support
building it, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released lastweek. And on Monday, ABC ran an interview with the outgoing head of theCustoms and Border Protection agency, who cast doubt on the project'sutility.
“I think that anyone who’s been familiar with the Southwest border andthe terrain … kind of recognizes that building a wall along the entire
Southwest border is probably not going to work,” stated Gil Kerlikowske,
commissioner of the CBP under President Barack Obama. “When we lookat the cost — and we have about 600 miles of fencing now — we look at themaintenance and the upkeep, we know how incredibly difficult it is.”This puts Chim Pom's sardonic treehouse, located in a private backyard
about 2 ½ miles east of downtown Tijuana, at the center of a charged
political storm.

A view of the border treehouse created by Japanese art collective Chim Pom, which istitled "U.S.A. Visitor Center." (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

Earlier this month, just as Trump was making his comments about getting
construction on the wall started, I met with Ushiro and fellow Chim Pom
member Motomu Inaoka in a drizzly supermarket parking lot on Tijuana's
traffic­jammed Boulevard Cuauhtemoc. From there, the pair drove me
into the hills of Colonia Libertad, a neighborhood that is framed by theinfrastructure of transit — and the denial of transit: A railroad to the west,
the Tijuana International Airport to the east and the U.S.­Mexico borderwall, just to the north.

Ushiro, a slim young man in a pork pie hat, said that Chim Pom grewinterested in the border for a variety of reasons. "We saw Donald Trumpon the news — the immigration issue," he said. "And we'd heard rumors
about tunnels and people jumping the wall."Inaoka turned onto a muddy dirt road that runs parallel to the border wall.
We pulled up to a small dwelling whose northern edge shares a boundarywith the border. As we spilled out of the car, we were greeted by a pack ofchildren who surrounded Ushiro with shouts and hugs. Behind them was
Esther Arias Medina, a steely Mexican matriarch who has lived on thisland as long as she can remember — certainly long before a border wall
ever materialized.

ever materialized.
When the artists knocked on her door and asked for permission to build atreehouse in the lone pepper tree that inhabits her tiny yard, she said, "I
didn't think about it. I just said yes." The children, she added, adore it.
We followed the kids to the back, where another member of Chim Pom,Ellie, who doesn't use a surname and is the only woman in the group,
waved hello from her perch in the treehouse.

Ryuta Ushiro of Chim Pom (wearing hat), sits with neighborhood children in their border
treehouse. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)Ellie's own immigration troubles have given the collective a personalreason for creating a piece about the border.
In 2012, the artist, who also works in television, flew to Hawaii for a shootwith a Japanese video crew. Ushiro said that as a gag a member of the TV
crew checked off a box on a visa waiver application stating that he had
been involved in terrorist activities. As a result, the entire crew wasbanned from entering the U.S. and since then, Ellie's applications to enterthe U.S. have been denied.
The treehouse is as close as she'll get to the U.S. for now. And the piecenods to this closeness: Its exterior is emblazoned with a sign that reads"U.S.A. Visitor Center."

"U.S.A. Visitor Center.""What is the purpose of a visitor center?" Ushiro asked. "Parks like theGrand Canyon have visitor centers. [People] might not be able to go in, butthey can see it from the visitor center. Ellie can't go into the U.S., so shesees it from here."Based in Tokyo, the six members of Chim Pom have been working
together for more than a decade, frequently taking on issues of politics andenvironment — often in wry ways.

They came to prominence in 2006 with an installation called "Super Rat,"
which featured taxidermied rats from the city's Shibuya District — some ofwhich have developed an immunity to poison — painted to resemble thePokemon character Pikachu.

Sol, age 7, plays on the border wall, which stretches for miles into the western horizon.
(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)In their ongoing piece “Don’t Follow the Wind,” the collective traveled intothe exclusion zone around the site of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
disaster and installed an art exhibition featuring works by various
international figures including Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei,
photographer Taryn Simon and Internet pranksters Eva and Francophotographer Taryn Simon and Internet pranksters Eva and Franco
Mattes. The installation will not open to the public until the area aroundFukushima is declared safe for human settlement. That could mean
decades.
"We are interested in invisible worlds," Ushiro said of the piece. "Thisproblem is long­term and it's global and no one knows when Fukushima
will be open again."
The treehouse project began last summer, when four members of Chim
Pom, along with a fellow artist, took a drive along the U.S.­Mexico borderfrom Mexicali to Playas de Tijuana looking for something, anything, thatmight spark an idea for an installation or a performance.
In Colonia Libertad, they came across Arias' singular home. "I'd neverseen such a crazy house," Ushiro said. "The landscape is really beautiful —you can see so much."That landscape includes the vast architecture of U.S. security theater.

A view of the grave sculpture "Libertad" placed on the U.S. side of the border — but visible
from both countries. (Chim Pom / MUJIN­TO Production, Tokyo)From the treehouse's northern window, it is possible to take in the sight ofan unusual no man's land: Several hundred feet north of the wall thatmarks the border is a second fence on U.S. territory. The fence creates amarks the border is a second fence on U.S. territory. The fence creates anarrow corridor along the border that is closely monitored by the CBP. (Icounted one helicopter, half­a­dozen trucks and one four­wheeler in thecourse of an afternoon.)
Chim Pom's treehouse — which could sleep two adults comfortably— offers a humorous counterpoint to this austere landscape.
Its interior is decorated with a jumble of objects: sketches, maps andworks of great American literature, such as Mark Twain's "The Adventuresof Tom Sawyer" (in Japanese). On one side hangs a coyote pelt — a nod tothe smugglers known as coyotes, who help spirit migrants across theborder, but also to famed conceptualist Joseph Beuys, who once locked
himself in a Manhattan gallery with a wild coyote as a work ofperformance.

A coyote pelt hangs inside the treehouse, in honor of Joseph Beuys and a reference to theindividuals who help smuggle people across the border. (Carolina A. MIranda / Los
Angeles Times)In addition to the treehouse, the artists created a small plastic sculpture ofa grave titled "Libertad" (Liberty), which they placed on the U.S. side of
the border as part of a short performance.
Late in the afternoon, the rain clouds parted and the border was
suddenly bathed in misty light. Two stray dogs trotted through the no
man's land on the U.S. side, oblivious to the bureaucracy of international

man's land on the U.S. side, oblivious to the bureaucracy of international
borders. Ellie gathered the Arias kids, along with their cousins and friends,
to help carry the sculpture down the hill in a squealing, chaotic procession.
At the chosen point, Fernando Arias, Esther's son, clambered over the firstborder wall on Mexican land and arranged the piece on U.S. land, in thegap formed before the second fence — an action that earned him a quick
blast of a Border Patrol officer's siren. Arias quickly clambered back over
the wall to Mexican territory.
The piece, Ushiro said, "is to make a grave for liberty on U.S.A. land."Fernando Arias arranged the sculpture "Libertad' on the U.S. side of the border as part ofa performance organized by Chim Pom. (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

While the election has brought much talk of building a border wall, thereality is that in places such as Colonia Libertad, walls have been a reality
for a decade (even as undocumented immigration has dipped). Sometimes
this has put the Arias family in the middle of tear gas and pepper sprayassaults from border patrol.

Yet as imposing as the walls appear, they are nonetheless permeable. TheU.S. fence, with its dense metal weave and its crown of concertina wire, isfull of patches where determined individuals have sliced their way throughwith wire cutters. Ushiro said that in his time working on the treehouse, hehas seen a number of people make it through.

"Donald Trump can build the highest wall," he said, "but it's useless."

Kids play in view of the wall marking the U.S.­Mexico border — and a fiberglass sculpture
bearing the name "Libertad." (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

Before us, a 7­year­old girl named Sol climbed the border wall as if it werea jungle gym. She sat on top and paused for a moment to look around.
Then she turned and asked me if I was from "el otro lado" — the otherside. I nodded. She replied: "I know people there too."A drawing inside the treehouse depicts the procession of children who carried a symbolic
grave bearing the words "Libertad." (Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)Sign up for our weekly Essential Arts & Culture newsletter » »carolina.miranda@latimes.com
On Twitter: @cmonstahALSO
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ENTER YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSCarolina A. Miranda

Carolina A. Miranda is a Los Angeles Times staff writer covering a wide gamut of culture,including visual art, architecture and film, not to mention performance art cabaret divas. Her
work often looks at how art intersects with politics, gender and race — from the ways in which
artists are tackling the U.S.­Mexico border to the ways in which art intersects with developmentand gentrification. She is a regular contributor to KCRW's “Press Play” and was a winner of the2017 Rabkin Prize in Visual Arts Journalism.

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FOR THE RECORDJA N 2 5, 2 017 | 1 :20 PM

This article states that the artist Ellie flew to Hawaii in 2012 for a shoot with a Japanese video crew who wereThis article states that the artist Ellie flew to Hawaii in 2012 for a shoot with a Japanese video crew who were
subsequently banned from entering the U.S. The artist was preparing to fly to Hawaii when the incident
occurred.

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