‘a history of walls’
— Andrew Sargus Klein
Karla Cordero’s ‘a history of walls’ is a diptych. There are two visions of a wall, the first in a back yard and the second between two countries. And within those two visions is a deep current of violence—the “dead blood” color of the fence, the birth of a “wet tombstone,” the starving children.
There is little here that needs to be explicit. The proposed wall between the United States and Mexico is a continuation of white supremacy and its inherent, incessant violence. What should be a familiar childhood memory of losing a toy in a neighbor’s yard is a cutting metaphor for the suffering inflicted on immigrants on either side of the border. The last image is of tongues as “a sea of small pink hands reaching for the sky,” and I hope that image stays with you as it stays with me: as a necessary and unsettling waking dream that demands a response.