ELEMENTS
OF ERASURE
Ambivalent feelings are floundering authoritarian arenas like the borderlands where alienated bodies fear, hope and doubt at all times building a tolerance for ambiguity to understand the in-betweenness of things, where layers, wrappers, and pleated folds clashes with a possibility of being stable and surrender, but they choose not to, permeating glimpses of self-governance on the materialities that surround them.
Materialities at the borderlands compose an extension of plural bodies: objects, feelings, structures, tools, and laws that together collide with the institutional ways of administering them like a boundary marker and a treaty. Through the lens of legality as a way of collecting, I collaged different border treatises about land and water throughout the history of the boundaries between México and USA, together with a colonial memoir from the demarcation of boundaries in Nigeria. By making visible the different styles and typographies of the files, I am interested in their materiality as found objects on the internet, highlighting the arbitrary gesture of gluing them together, erasing locations and names to question legality as a tool that updates and deploys a border anywhere.
Materialities at the borderlands compose an extension of plural bodies: objects, feelings, structures, tools, and laws that together collide with the institutional ways of administering them like a boundary marker and a treaty. Through the lens of legality as a way of collecting, I collaged different border treatises about land and water throughout the history of the boundaries between México and USA, together with a colonial memoir from the demarcation of boundaries in Nigeria. By making visible the different styles and typographies of the files, I am interested in their materiality as found objects on the internet, highlighting the arbitrary gesture of gluing them together, erasing locations and names to question legality as a tool that updates and deploys a border anywhere.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a5b35aaafad45ae7ea44d522e8339a6fe66a2e642c586f0db1432873401221ad/DSC08611.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8efcf36c070670c76eca91c9497c5ee380ef3496f7e10fed5a91e83b9cda0d14/DSC08651.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6387caf04a1ef32b55e052cbc8b6823b8976d5d277f526e7877dd3d278ab5ad7/DSC08857.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/da05f8ae425ed0d83ba707db44745c4b81591c42c28a319d4d8fc6eafa4f3757/DSC08618.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9db98deb26e2d969e3a04e74cb0d924e7a058d3b93939e2c92588faeab4df7ed/DSC08723.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/81f2b41141f48750a9612341daac0f76b2913f80eeb63f61643a7776d3120e62/DSC08953.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f6d8df296a0567e511e48d8ff676ee0926a69643ba87c164946e6119168cf023/DSC08730.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/61f0ed087a0e13ae9558e3762fc1b09aa8fbe178088742be952aa6603009e04c/DSC08928.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/17742f9f57fb2379fea6a8ed0533dbf28bad3ac04c20191673f5143e6259cc62/DSC08621.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dc11a2fee2927039a5384e1f847f29af6cfe66e2e46bc2c2139908cfc74eba6c/tratado_final-web.png)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3b373a6506af36f43797eecc8fe1f2fefce893849909a2b22cae7ab9490f88ac/DSC08734.jpg)