Larry and Debby Kline artists and provocateurs – installation, performances, and other works
Maquette for Memorial for a Perilous Journey: Running to Racism
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Memorial for a Perilous Journey: Running to Racism Maquette for proposed project |
| The running figures in this piece are appropriated from California highway signage intended to indicate the crossing of undocumented immigrants. The silhouettes are caricatures of a Mexican family; the man is short and squat, the child in pigtails. Our state government has chosen to use these symbols rather than the more generic and universally recognizable crossing symbols. As informational signs they are useful but we find their ethnic specificity problematic. One can imagine the equivalent crossing signs in a predominantly African American, Hassidic or Arab community. It is ironic that this flight from economic depression leads to a new set of oppressive circumstances. The full scale version of this piece is intended to be mounted on a raft and floated down the Tijuana River to the Pacific Ocean where it will be sailed Northward to be placed on land as a lasting monument to those who have perished in the crossing.© Larry and Debby Kline 2002 | |
