“The U.S. Mexican border es una herida abierta (an open wound) where the Third World grates against the 1st and bleeds.”

Gloria Anzaldua. Borderlands la Frontera/ The New Mestiza. 1987. An open wound made by a tattoo artist of the line of the US Mexican border without ink, made from my 1st vertebra to my last creating a 22 inch scar. This equation of the border to an open wound has led me to research both wounds and borders as sites of trauma in migrant and displaced communities; exploring Anzaldua’s focus on cultural identity, hybridity, and displacement. Michel Foucault’s ideas of biopolitics, subjugated knowledges and inscription are similarly central to my analysis of the wound. The performance will be reopen at least once every year at heightened moments of tensions, deportations or deaths around the border, and will be performed in places that have a relationship to the border in both nations. The tattoo is done while recordings of the experiences of immigrants crossing the border are heard and they relate to the specific geographic locations where the crossings happened.