Postcommodity in "Borderlands"

Art21 proudly presents this special extended segment as a complement to the “Borderlands” episode from the tenth season of the Art in the Twenty-First Century series. Edited to focus on a singular artist narrative, this film contains original material not included in the television broadcast.

“Borderlands” premiered in October 2020 on PBS. Watch now or on the PBS app.

The interdisciplinary collective Postcommodity creates site-specific installations and interventions that critically examine our modern-day institutions and systems through the history and perspectives of Indigenous people. Influenced by growing up in the southwestern United States, the artists Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist revisit their 2015 public installation, Repellent Fence, produced with previous Postcommodity artist, Raven Chacon. A two-mile-long line of enormous balloons across the Arizona-Sonora border, Repellent Fence symbolically sutured together cultures and lands that had been unified long before borders were drawn. Shown installing ambitious architectural interventions at the Art Institute of Chicago and LAXART in Los Angeles, Martínez and Twist consider how American cities have been supported by and will continue to be transformed by the migration of Indigenous peoples from Mexico and Central and South America. To examine our cultural institutions and their demographic future, the pair thinks of the coming decades, when the U.S. Census Bureau predicts a non-White majority. “Our job is to allow a new public memory to be born,” says Martínez. “Here’s our lens; take a look at the world through it, and tell us what you think.”

Other featured projects include Do You Remember When? (2009), produced in collaboration with previous Postcommodity artist Raven Chacon (2009–2018), co-founder Steven Yazzie (2007–2010), and co-founder Nathan Young (2007–2015).

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