Border Area Installations Disappointing

This year’s “Streetsites” the annual art-in-public-places project sponsored by Sushi Performance and Visual Art gallery had a lot of potential.

This year, the downtown gallery asked artists to create works of art at the Tijuana River Natural Estuarine Reserve in Imperial Beach using “water” as a theme. This was a change, since past “Streetsites” have not had a single theme and the works have been spread out across a variety of sites, most of them in downtown San Diego.

The estuary is an environment rich in dichotomy. It is where fresh water connects with salt tides and where condominium complexes surround a wetland preserve. It is a bird sanctuary next to the Imperial Beach Naval Air Station. It is also right on the border, a thoroughfare for illegal immigrants who cross into the United States.

The three artists in the exhibition--Lee Boroson, Jean Lee Habenicht and Wick Alexander--have addressed the site and the issues surrounding it in unusual and original ways. Nonetheless, the show is disappointing.

Part of the problem is that, although there are 2,531 acres of land at the estuary, most of the work in this show is placed inside the visitor’s center. It was disheartening to find innovative projects in such a gallery-like environment.

Boroson’s untitled piece attempts to examine two aspects of the estuary: the natural filtering process of the wetlands and the use of the area as a thoroughfare by undocumented workers.

For a month Boroson collected shoes left behind by Mexicans. (Reserve rangers come across wet shoes and clothes on such a regular basis that they call one part of the estuary “underwear point.”) Then Boroson placed 20 shoes in a water-filled tub that he placed inside the visitor center.

A sump pump moves the water through various hoses to a glass tank outside, where each hose is attached to a filter. The water then returns back to the tub creating an endless recycling of the water.

But water condensation forms on the acrylic cover placed on the tub, so that the viewer cannot see the shoes, making the most poignant part of the work ineffectual. Boroson also subverts his purpose by using green garden hoses, so even the water being pumped can’t be seen.

Boroson’s piece might have been stronger placed outside. The contrast between nature and technology would have been more apparent. And, if we could have seen the shoes, perhaps the work could have revealed some poetic metaphors, such as the idea that a bird sanctuary doesn’t offer any protection for people, or that most Mexicans have to filter aspects of their culture when living in the United States.

Of the three artists’ works, Jean Lee Habenicht’s “Tap, Tap, Salt” focuses most on water, but her primary concern is how education, by giving a predetermined point of view, can interfere with our perceptions.

For “Tap, Tap, Salt” Habenicht placed Mexican terra cotta vessels on stands along the path to the visitor center entrance and labeled them “tap,” “river,” “rain,” “salt.” But, these are so subtle that they could easily be missed, and it is in the center itself where she makes her most dramatic statement.

On two windows Habenicht created one-dimensional drawings that are supposed to represent the landscape seen from the windows. Underneath one window Habenicht placed binoculars and underneath the other she put three Viewmasters, the children’s toys used to view circular slide sheets.

The binoculars encourage you to look out across the vista to see that much more is going on then what is represented in the drawings. The three Viewmasters offer tongue-in-cheek examples of water consumption, the immediate panorama and the beneficial effects of water.

One Viewmaster contains slides of a toilet, shower head, sinks and a garden hose. Another offers slides of the condominium complex across from the visitor center. The third depicts plants in bloom.

Habenicht’s subtlety and humor can be engaging, but one really has to look to find all the aspects of her work. For example, she also made tableaux that could be mistaken for the informational ones used by the center, but hers are both playful and cynical, rather than helpful. Her work is intended to make a lighthearted comment on how children using the visitor’s center to gather information may in fact be distracted from really visiting the site.

The portion of the show by Wick Alexander is the strongest, even though much of the artist’s work is not site-specific: He has hung a series of paintings about border issues from the last decade in the visitors’ center, and though these paintings are compelling they do not follow the concept for the show.

However, Wick has also created an outdoor installation called ‘La Calle.” This powerful work is site-specific and appropriate to the exhibition, although it never deals with the theme of “water.”

Along an estuary path, Alexander placed three altars using his own paintings as retablos --votive paintings created after someone survives a near disaster--and also including clothing and liquor bottles left by undocumented workers.

“My Retablo” depicts people running in panic after a crane has hit an electric wire. “Esau?” was for a friend of Alexander’s who lost his memory at work after suffering a stroke or hitting his head. “Retablo for Lupe” portrays an accident in which an individual who was a digging a hole for a tree was buried alive.

These altars are lit at night, so, in theory, they will be among the first things the undocumented immigrants will see. For them it should be a sobering sight, informing them that numerous obstacles can be found in the workplace on this side of the border.

* Sushi’s seventh annual “Streetsites” is at the Tijuana River National Estuarine Reserve through April 11. Take Interstate 5 south (past Coronado Bridge) to Imperial Beach. Exit Coronado Avenue West to 3rd Avenue and then turn left. Follow the road around to the Estuary parking on the right. Visitor Center hours are Monday to Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.