Curated by Elizabeth S. Hawley

Featuring work by:

Marcella Ernest  |  Hana Yoshihata  |  Lionel Cruet
Sabrina Chou  |  Aviva Rahmani  |  Alejandro Durán
Allison Grant  |  Erin LeAnn Mitchell  |  Nicole Antebi
Celina Galicia  |  Ingrid Levya
Sonia Desai Rayka  |  Emma Robbins

The phrase “American border” typically conjures up the land-based geopolitical boundaries of the contiguous United States, usually concerning the U.S.-Canada and, more frequently, U.S.-Mexico border. The artists in this exhibition contest such continental connotations, reconceptualizing U.S. boundaries as borderwaters. Their projects emphasize the shorelines of the U.S. and its island regions; the historical and contemporary significance of waterways—ranging from inland rivers to international oceanic passages—and their inextricable linkage with colonialist, imperialist U.S. policies; and the ecological inseparability of waterways that ensures changes in one area’s borderwaters have global effects.

Marcella Ernest and the women of arts collective las polígonas—Nicole Antebi, Ingrid Leyva, Celina Galicia, and Sonia Desai Rayka—remind viewers that even the borders of the coterminous U.S. are innately connected to water and waterways that include the Boundary Waters between Minnesota and Ontario and the Rio Grande/Río Bravo separating Texas from northern Mexico.

Erin LeAnn Mitchell and Emma Robbins underscore how waterways functioned in the U.S. slave trade, (broken) treaties with Indigenous peoples, and legacies of resultant violent displacements, fluidly drawing together diasporic histories.

Hana Yoshihata and Lionel Cruet stress the archipelagic aspect of American borderwaters, re-centering the concerns of their respective island homelands of Hawaii and Puerto Rico—areas the U.S. simultaneously claims as state/territory and dismisses as ancillary to the mainland.

Aviva Rahmani, Alejandro Durán, and Allison Grant emphasize the ways American borderwaters impact and are impacted by waterways around the world in terms of climate change and ecological degradation.

Sabrina Chou’s site-specific installation addresses the geo- and bio-politics of waters, bodies, and the fluidity of their boundaries in the context of Mobile, AL.

Curator, Elizabeth “Betsy” S. Hawley is an art historian, writer, and curator specializing in modern and contemporary art and art of the Americas. Her research often focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century Indigenous art, and other areas of expertise include ecocritical art, feminist/women’s art, and art of the American West. Betsy joined the faculty at the University of South Alabama as an assistant professor of art history in 2022.

GALLERY TALK: EMMA ROBBINS

November 10 @ 7 PM

Generous funding for this exhibition and related programming is provided by: