Haydee Alonso

Website: haydeealonso.com

Through my work, I explore the notion of selfhood in a bi-national context. Existing in the fluid and liminal space that characterizes borders contributes to my ever-transitory idnetity. It is nearly impossible for me to identify as entirely Mexican or entirely American, instead, I always feel a sense of fluidity between the two. THe border represented nothing more than a passive presence in my life. If anything, it was austere and mundane.

Given my experience, I developed a tendency to romanticize borders as a place of cultural exchange and alluring fluidity. Two characteristics that the space does offer, but only to those of us with the class and nation priviledge necessary to smoothly navigate what would otherwise be experienced as a stark barrier that is at best imposing, and at worse violent.

The US-Mexican border is not a stable entity with a single meaning, but rather, it represents a variety of entities which are in constant flux. THe border means different things to different individuals at different times. THe recent political, economic, environmental and pandemic difficulties we have all faced have had the consequence of making the border more real than ever. Ciudad Juarez and El Paso are not sister cities. Not when the United States cuts of gas supplies to Mexico in the middle of arctic conditions: leaving almost five million Mexicans without power. The blurring of borders, something that I so firmly believed in, does not exist.