Visualizing Citizenship

Composed of videos, diagrams, maps, and visual narratives, the show at the YBCA in San Francisco sees border communities as opportunities for civic and political creativity.

The continental border between the United States and Mexico has become the central protagonist in the latest version of America’s anti-immigration script, a place to safely project a collective fear of the “other.”

"Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination", exhibition view, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2017
Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination
"Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination", exhibition view, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2017
"Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination", exhibition view, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2017
"Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination", exhibition view, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2017

  The border wall exists not only as a barrier against Mexico, far from the daily lives of most Americans, but it is invisibly reproduced in neighborhoods across the US, where public divestment, marginalization, racism, and inequality have continued to divide communities and institutions, enflaming urban violence and undermining the well-being and security of our own communities in dramatic ways.

Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, Cross border community station, model

Border regions like San Diego – Tijuana should not be marginalized as undifferentiated sites of danger but epicenters of urban and political creativity: a geography of conflict from which new more inclusive cross-border public imaginaries can emerge, based on integration and cooperation, not division and fear. And it is precisely within the marginalized yet resilient immigrant communities flanking the US-Mexico border that such a conception of civic culture can emerge, marked by empathy, collaboration and shared aspirations.

"Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination", exhibition view, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2017


until 18 June 2017
Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination
curated by Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman    
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street, San Francisco