creative forces

Blog # 90…February 2019

Trumpty Dumpty wanted a wall
But Trumpty Dumpty's starting to fall
While Nancy and the Blues are standing up firm
Trumpty's starting to wiggle and squirm.

Good fences are meant to make good neighbours – keeping the livestock from wandering, encouraging people to mind their own business and respect others. 

What about walls though? There were walls made of men between Athens and Sparta and the walls of Jericho were tumbled by Joshua and his followers blowing their rams’ horns (or maybe it was an earthquake) before burning the city. A happier scene greeted the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.

Talk of walls is loud these days; they’re somehow seen as a simple solution to the very complicated issue of people wanting to move from a place that’s dangerous or unsustainable for living to a place that isn’t. At the end of WWII there were 7 walls around the world, 15 in 1989.  At last count there were 77 – 65 countries hoping to protect their territory and increase security by barricading their borders with walls.

In Mexico, it’s stimulated a flurry of creative responses, sometimes to get through to the other side, holes through, tunnels under, ramps over. 

Artists are beginning  to claim and tame the walls, rendering them less powerful.  Mexican artists have had their way with various parts of their wall, making art great again, trumping Trump.

My favourite treatment is the Mexican section painted blue to blend with the sky, making it almost invisible and part of the landscape.

I know it's not February yet, but this seemed to want to be up there today.