Land | Border |Other

Photography, video and performance, Chihuahuan Desert, México/US border, 2012-2014.

Land || Border || Other, which also includes the work Red Line Through Land, evolved out of  a four-month artist residency at Marfa Contemporary in West Texas. While on the border between Mexico and the United States, Yoland used video, photography, sculpture and performance to investigate sites of division and restriction.

Yoland took several field excursions along the border, some of these were taken alone, while others were taken alongside border patrol guards, oil industry workers or cattle ranchers. On these trips, Yoland observed the effects that natural and artificial boundaries had on these different groups. While with ranchers Yoland observed how tumbleweeds freely crossed boundaries such as barbed wire fences or the national border, but also learnt that this icon of the American landscape is not indigenous, but originated in Russia. Henceforth, the paradoxical nature of these plants became a source of inspiration for the form of this body of work, and a means through which to investigate notions of borders, invasion, and immigration. “These works attempt to unpick the concept of ownership in relation to both the landscape and the bodies within it,” said Yoland. “Through performance, sculpture, photography and video, I consider how the physical and conceptual demarcation of the land creates its own limits on the way we think and how we come to determine our notions of hierarchy, control and freedom.”

Land || Border || Other was supported by Marfa Contemporary (TX) 2012-13 and Oklahoma Contemporary (OKC) 2014.

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