2018 FENCE Jury Choice Award featuring Griselda San Martin

Griselda San Martin is the recipient of the 2018 FENCE Jury Choice Award where she was awarded a $5,000 Grant plus an exhibition at Photoville.

United Photo Industries' fourth collaboration with the NYC Parks Department and the DUMBO Business Improvement District displays the powerful work of photographer Griselda San Martin’s very powerful project on the already existing wall that divides the United States and Mexico, as a large scale photographic public art exhibition in DUMBO Brooklyn at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian entrance.

Located on Washington Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn, between Prospect & York Street, the exhibit will be on display from August 21 – December 20, 2018.

At the juncture of San Diego, California; and Tijuana, Mexico, the border wall’s rusting steel bars plunge into the sand, extending 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean, and casting a long and conflicting shadow.

“The Wall” is a documentary project about Friendship Park, a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border where families meet to share intimate moments through the metal fence that separates them.

Physical borders create symbolic boundaries that reinforce the rhetoric of “us versus them,” in which immigrants are seen as a threat to traditional narratives ingrained in various communities across America. The existence of these fences illustrates anti-immigrant sentiment, legitimizing exclusionary practices and justifying harsh government action. Once erected, they become enduring, permanent features of the geopolitical landscape and a powerful, aggressive reminder to immigrants that they don’t belong.

"By calling attention to the human interactions at Friendship Park, where families visit and speak with one another through a metal fence, I attempt to neutralize what this wall was built to create—separation," said Griselda San Martin. "My goal is to transform the discourse of border security into a conversation about immigrant visibility, addressing audiences on both sides of the wall by challenging popular assumptions, or by reminding them that they are seen, heard and that they matter. I believe this work is especially meaningful now, given the current socio-political global context."