With the onset of 2018, the notion that Donald Trump’s Republican administration is by now splayed out and broken at the bottom of a very deep ethical void is hardly a fresh take. But ‘Prototypes’ – a new land art exhibition that recently opened in Otay Mesa, San Diego – feels like a particularly abject manifestation of these tumultuous times.
The concept screams satire. Fingers crossed it is. Curated by a US-based non-profit art organisation dubbed MAGA (what else?), the show presents eight border wall prototypes commissioned by the US government for Trump’s long-mooted barrier between Mexico and the southern United States.
In March 2017, US Customs and Border Protection made a call for proposals for border prototypes, in concrete or ‘other than concrete’, both of which are represented here. Eight contracts were awarded to six companies, and each was given 30 days to finish their 30ft tall concepts, beginning on 26 September 2017. These were built for testing (against ‘breaching, digging and scaling’) in Otay Mesa, a part of San Diego close to the Mexican border, and where they’re now on view to the public.
In architectural and design contexts it’s an objectively interesting idea. Where the water becomes murkier is in the partisan, congratulatory way the show’s press release and website sells the border wall concepts as facets of the Trump administration’s maligned security strategy – lest we forget the vitriolic 2015 campaign pronouncements of Mexicans as rapists and drug-smugglers, and the subsequent belittling of President Enrique Peña Nieto over who’d be paying the estimated £25bn cost of the border wall (Trump declared Mexico financially responsible, a notion immediately dismissed by Nieto).
What’s more, the ‘Prototypes’ website links to an on-site petition calling for the wall concepts to be designated national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906, ‘preserved and protected for all future generations of people’ – effectively a safeguarding of the very worst of the contemporary American condition.
An elaborate parody? We can only hope. There’s a nihilistic humour in redefining Trump’s nationalism and retrograde policies as conceptual art. Bad taste, sure, but less depressing than the po-faced alternative. What a time to be alive, eh?
Left, ELTA North America prototype, $406,318. Right, Caddell Construction prototype, $344,000. Courtesy of MAGA.
Left, Fisher Sand & Gravel prototype, $365,000. Right, WG Yates & Sons prototype, $458,103. Courtesy of MAGA.
Left, Caddell Construction prototype, $320,000. Right, KWR Construction prototype, $486,411. Courtesy of MAGA.
Left, WG Yates & Sons prototype, $453,548. Right, Texas Sterling Const prototype, $470,000. Courtesy of MAGA.
INFORMATION
Tours run on a regular basis until 28 January, departing from San Diego, USA, and Tijuana, Mexico. borderwallprototypes.org
-
Desert X 2025 review: a new American dream grows in the Coachella ValleyWill Jennings reports from the epic California art festival. Here are the highlights
-
In ‘The Last Showgirl’, nostalgia is a drug like any otherGia Coppola takes us to Las Vegas after the party has ended in new film starring Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
-
‘American Photography’: centuries-spanning show reveals timely truthsAt the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Europe’s first major survey of American photography reveals the contradictions and complexities that have long defined this world superpower
-
Sundance Film Festival 2025: The films we can't wait to watchSundance Film Festival, which runs 23 January - 2 February, has long been considered a hub of cinematic innovation. These are the ones to watch from this year’s premieres
-
What is RedNote? Inside the social media app drawing American users ahead of the US TikTok banDownloads of the Chinese-owned platform have spiked as US users look for an alternative to TikTok, which faces a ban on national security grounds. What is Rednote, and what are the implications of its ascent?
-
Architecture and the new world: The Brutalist reframes the American dreamBrady Corbet’s third feature film, The Brutalist, demonstrates how violence is a building block for ideology
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in PhiladelphiaArtist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
