United States of North America
ERIKA HARRSCH
www.erikaharrsch.com
UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA Passport -‐United States of North America (2009), a fictitious passport, that joins the three NAFTA members passport heraldics: Canada; U.SA; and México. This piece expands the boundaries of these individual countries, questions the concept of nation, reflects on the NAFTA treaty and raises a conversation about migration. The Monarch Butterfly known for its migrations between Canada and Mexico is an emblematic representation of a nation without borders; a linked reference with people's multi-‐national, multi-‐generational migrations that are increasing more in today's global world in constant mobility.– Erika Harrsch 2009
ESTADOS UNIDOS DE NORTE AMERICA Pasaporte –Estados Unidos de Norte América (2009) es un pasaporte ficticio que une las heráldicas de los pasaportes de los tres países miembros del TLC: Canadá, USA y México. La pieza expande las fronteras de estos tres países individuales y cuestiona el concepto de nación, así mismo reflexiona sobre el TLC y lo complejo del tema migratorio. La Mariposa Monarca conocida por su migración entre Canadá y México, es la emblemática representación de una nación unificada y sin fronteras; una referencia que vincula las migraciones multinacionales y multi-‐generacionales de personas alrededor de un mundo globalizado y en continuo movimiento.– Erika Harrsch 2009
United States of North America By Elizabeth Ferrer, BRIC Contemporary Art Vicepresident, Brooklyn NY From the exhibition catalog, Status Report, at the BRIC Rotunda Gallery , Brooklyn, 2009
Erika Harrsch suggests an American continent absent of geopolitical borders with her work United States of North America. She imagines a single unified realm encompassing the United States, Canada, and Mexico, members of the North American Free Trade Agreement. To that end Harrsch has created an interactive installation whose centerpiece is an elaborately conceived passport. The passport features an original seal that combines symbols of the three countries and at its center, a monarch butterfly known for an annual migration between México and Canada, and a symbol of metamorphosis, freedom and hope. The interior pages contain texts on NAFTA, free trade, human rights and related topics, in place of visas and entry stamps. The passport itself is held in a vitrine, symbolizing its high value to an individual. Audience participation is essential to Harrsch’s installation. She invites viewers to spin a prize wheel for the chance to win a limited edition passport, a sardonic act connoting the lottery visas and the chance nature of illegal entry into the United States (one wheel segment contains the now-‐iconic silhouette of a running family, a symbol used on signage along the San Diego Freeway where immigrants have been struck by motorists) as well as the absurd logic of some immigration policies.
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Estados Unidos de Norteámerica Elizabeth Ferrer, vicepresidente de Arte Contemporáneo en BRIC Del catálogo de la exhibición Status Report, en la galería BRIC Rotunda, Brooklyn, 2009
Con su obra Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, Erika Harrsch sugiere la idea de un continente americano sin fronteras geopolíticas. Imagina un solo territorio unificado y compuesto por los miembros del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN): Estados Unidos, Canadá y México. Con este fin, Harrsch crea una instalación interactiva cuya pieza central es un pasaporte concebido en forma muy elaborada. El pasaporte se caracteriza por un original emblema que combina símbolos de los tres países, el cual incluye, al centro, a la mariposa monarca, conocida por su épica migración anual entre México, Estados Unidos y Canadá, y que es un símbolo de metamorfosis, libertad y esperanza. Las páginas interiores contienen textos sobre el TLCAN, el libre comercio, los derechos humanos y otros temas relacionados, a manera de visas y sellos de entrada. El pasaporte se exhibe en una vitrina y simboliza así su valor excepcional para cualquier individuo. La participación del público es esencial para la instalación de Harrsch. Se invita a los espectadores a girar una ruleta de la suerte para tener la oportunidad de ganarse un pasaporte de edición limitada, un acto irónico que hace referencia a las visas de lotería y a lo azaroso de pretender entrar de manera ilegal a Estados Unidos (un segmento de la rueda contiene la silueta –ahora icónica– de una familia corriendo; este símbolo es usado a lo largo de la autopista de San Diego, donde inmigrantes han sido atropellados por automovilistas). Asimismo, la obra reflexiona acerca de la lógica, a veces absurda, de algunas políticas migratorias.
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United States of North America Passport office at the LODZ Biennale in Poland 2010
Passport office at the International LODZ Biennale -‐Lodz, Poland
United States of North America Passport office at the LODZ Biennale in Poland 2010
Passport office at the International LODZ Biennale -‐Lodz, Poland
United States of North America Passport office at the LODZ Biennale in Poland 2010
United States of North America Passport office at the LODZ Biennale in Poland 2010
United States of North America at the Aldrich Museum of Art, USA
United States of North America at the Aldrich Museum of Art, USA
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In Artist’s Game Show, the Prize Is a Passport By JULIE TURKEWITZ FEBRUARY 24, 2013 NEW YORK TIMES February 24, 2013 At her installation at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., Erika Harrsch gave passport applications to Steve Kuhn of Tarrytown, N.Y., and his daughters Zoe and Eva.Credit Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times In a quiet museum in a placid Connecticut community, Lee Walther, 72, is shrieking. She clasps her hands in an Oscar-‐winning pose, then throws them wildly toward the air. She’s just discovered that she’s won a passport from the United States of North America, which will allow her to travel anywhere in the world. Of course, the passport is from a fictional country. Both the passport and the country are part of an interactive art installation created by Erika Harrsch, a Queens artist. With immigration once again on the national agenda, Ms. Harrsch has been likening a visit to an immigration office to the experience of walking onto the set of a game show — as a contestant. On Saturday, Ms. Harrsch was at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., with her project, “United States of North America Passport.” Her installation envisions a borderless North American continent — a fictitious entity called the United States of North America — and encourages museum visitors to apply for a passport that will make them citizens. Once an application has been completed, Ms. Harrsch, playing the role of bureaucrat, invites applicants to spin a wheel to determine their fate. Spin to “You Win” and Ms. Harrsch, 42, hands over a passport, which confers the privilege to travel throughout the world. Land on “Illegal Alien” and she keeps that golden ticket locked in her slate-‐gray, Soviet-‐ style desk. 21
The game, she said, place participants into the vulnerable position of the millions of people who try to leave their countries every year. “I was thinking of how to create something that would actually make it touchable, this lottery process,” Ms. Harrsch said. “Something that is so heavy can be so difficult to approach.” Ms. Walther’s joy on Saturday gives, perhaps, a hint of what it feels like to suddenly become one of the relatively few with the freedom to move about the world. Danes, for instance, can land in 169 countries or territories without ever applying for a visa, according to Henley & Partners, a law firm that analyzes visa regulations every year. American born? No problem. You can pass 166 borders without prior approval. Born in Somalia or Afghanistan? Fewer than 30 nations allow you to enter without a visa. “Passport,” however, isn’t just about helping passport-‐carrying Americans understand the experiences of others. By pointing to — even mocking — the seemingly arbitrary nature of the laws that govern borders, Ms. Harrsch not so subtly suggests that we could live without them. “Borders are created by the mind,” she said. “Not by nature, not by instinct.” Ms. Harrsch is originally from Mexico City and knows something about the process. She arrived in New York on a tourist visa just weeks before Sept. 11, 2001, carrying just a suitcase and hoping to pursue an artistic career in the heart of the creative world, she said. She applied for an O-‐1 visa, a special residency permit for artists, athletes and scientists. After she submitted “a bible full of documents,” immigration officials granted her the visa, officially deemed her an “alien with extraordinary abilities,” and allowed her to stay for six years. In 2007, she spun the lottery wheel again, won a green card, and was promoted to resident alien. The years leading up to that, however, were fraught with anxiety. 22
” While in Mexico waiting to learn if she would be granted a permanent visa, she began filming monarch butterflies, which travel approximately 3,000 miles every year from Canada to Mexico. “I’m literally lying on the floor, filming the butterflies” in Michoacán, she said. “I realized, they’re doing exactly my same route, but they’re so free.” At that, “Passport” was born. The monarch butterfly has since become a central theme of the project, and the cover of Ms. Harrsch’s fantasy passport combines the designs of United States, Canadian and Mexican documents with an image of a butterfly. She envisions a world in which people travel as easily as monarchs, following the opportunities that each land has to offer. Of course, not everyone agrees with such a proposal. “I think that’s very dangerous, absolutely dangerous,” said Elena Roman, 65, who spun the wheel on Saturday. Ms. Roman said she had traveled to Costa Rica, Egypt, Italy, Morocco, Turkey and at least half a dozen other nations. But she could not envision opening this country in a similar way. “I would love that the future would have that,” she said. “But as the world is right now, with all the hatred and all the guns and all the animosity, it’s not the time.” She continued, “Everybody is trying to get some of this pie, and I think we need to look after our own.” Ms. Harrsch has traveled the country with the exhibit, and shown it in China, Mexico and Poland. In the United States, activists and undocumented immigrants sometimes approach her. “They say, ‘If this is a serious issue, why are you losing your time doing an art project? Do something for real,’” she said. “It’s not for me to speak with a loud voice to anybody. It’s for me more to speak to communities that bring this to the attention of leaders. It’s very difficult to approach leaders, and easier to approach the world.” A version of this article appears in print on 02/25/2013, on page A15 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Artist’s Installation Creates a World Without Borders. 23
United States of North America – Passport office at El Paso Texas, at the Santa Fe international border
United States of North America Passport office at the MEX/USA BORDER, El Paso, TX.
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United States of North America at the MEX/USA BORDER
United States of North America at the MEX/USA BORDER
Passport office participatory installation at the PINTA Art Fair, NY, USA
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United States of North America at MACLA, San Jose CA, USA
United States of North America at MACLA, San Jose CA, USA
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United States of North America (2009) United States of North America (2009) is a fictitious passport that joins the three NAFTA members passport's: Canada, USA, and México. It is an alternative vision that relates to my personal experience of being an immigrant. This piece was Influenced by my traveling between Mexico and the U.S. for the last eight years, working on a four year project filming the sanctuaries of the Monarch butterfly (known for its migrations between Canada and Central Mexico) and the intricate circumstances immigrants go through in order to get a U.S. Visa or resident permit. To create the cover image of the new passport, I joined the passport heraldics of the three countries. At the center the emblematic representation of the Monarch Butterfly, which belongs to the three nations, crossing freely without borders. All the symbols together form a distinctive badge of a nation, a new one unified and free. "United States of North America" expands the boundaries of these individual countries, questions the concept of nation, raises a conversation about immigration and reflects upon the outdated and incomplete NAFTA treaty. The monarch butterfly follows a mysterious progression that takes several generations to complete, they take advantage of each nation’s landscape for its life purposes; a linked reference with people's multi-‐national, multi-‐generational migrations that are increasing more in today's global world. A world in constant mobility where more people from many different countries are mixing and the idea of Nationality is diluting. We are no longer the Nation as it used to be, where citizens inhabiting the same territory were united by common descent, history, culture, or language. Erika Harrsch 43
Estados Unidos de Norte América (2009) Estados Unidos de Norte América (2009) es un pasaporte ficticio que une a los tres países miembros del TLC: Canadá, USA y México. La pieza es una visión alternativa que se relaciona a mi experiencia personal como artista mexicana que ha emigrado a los Estados Unidos. Durante los últimos ocho años he viajado constantemente entre México y los Estados Unidos y trabajado sobre un proyecto que tomó cuatro años, con las Mariposas Monarcas. Este proceso migratorio de las mariposas entre Canadá y México, al igual que las intrincadas circunstancias que debe atravesar un emigrante para obtener una visa o un permiso de residencia en los Estados Unidos han sido de gran influencia para el proyecto. Para crear la portada del nuevo pasaporte junté las heráldicas de los tres países en una sola. Al centro además una representación emblemática de la Mariposa Monarca, la cual pertenece a las tres naciones y las cruza libremente sin fronteras. Los símbolos unidos forman el escudo distintivo de una nueva nación unificada y libre. Estados Unidos de Norte América expande las fronteras de estas tres naciones individuales y cuestiona el concepto de nación, así mismo reflexiona sobre lo incompleto y obsoleto del TLC y lo complejo del tema migratorio. La mariposa monarca sigue una misteriosa progresión que toma varias generaciones para completarse y en el camino, aprovecha lo que el terreno de cada nación le aporta a sus intereses vitales. Esto es una referencia que vincula las migraciones multinacionales y multi-‐generacionales de personas alrededor del mundo globalizado de hoy. Un mundo en constante movilidad en el cual cada vez más ciudadanos de diferentes países se mezclan y el concepto de nación se va diluyendo. Hemos dejado atrás ese antiguo modelo de nación según el cual, personas que vivían en un mismo territorio estaban unidos por los mismos ancestros, una herencia, una historia y una lengua en común. Erika Harrsch 44
Customs Officials for Sale Xavier Canonne, Director of the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium
Animals recognize nations no more than borders. One-‐way streets, restricted areas, and military zones are to them as inconceivable and unfamiliar as the dotted lines human beings have set down to divide the world. Borders, despite any human claims to the contrary, are not natural features: they are horizons to be left behind, just as seas, mountains, and rivers are landmarks to be passed by; and animals go right on by them all. And though animals may defend the territories they've traced out by their wanderings, they read no maps and are always ready to venture farther out or, when the need arises, to backtrack. Who among us, like a prisoner in a cell, hasn't dreamed at least once of having wings and taking flight, like a bird or a butterfly, to soar over cities and seas at will without airport lines and luggage and visas? Icarus' fabled dream shouldn't be tied up in red tape. Likely much of the admiration we hold for animals—or disdain, depending on the person—is inspired by the freedom they have to come and go. They are symbols of a liberty that, despite our vaunted progress, we have yet to attain. Even so, some of us enjoy less freedom than others: the immigrants that authorities try to discourage with administrative constraints: forms, stamps, permits. Any foreigner who's been at the US border knows what I'm talking about. Ericka Harrsch, a Mexican artist living and working in New York, has created a passport bringing together Mexico, the United States, and Canada—North American countries that are each confronted in varying degrees by immigration and that all lie on the reproductive migratory path of the monarch butterfly. Using this magnificent butterfly as a metaphor, Harrsch explores the lives of immigrants, as well as their necessary comings-‐and-‐goings and their seasonal movements: the sentimental ties that cross state lines. 45
Naturally, Harrsch's passport is not intended for the monarch butterfly, which still flutters where it may, but rather has been inspired by Harrsch's own migratory path. Her passport is meant to unite the inhabitants of the three separate countries, like a self-‐portrait taken for ID. One day, there will be no more borders. On that distant day, the inhabitants of the United States of the World will be able to move freely over those once-‐policed borders and gaze upon the archeological remains of customs posts. Only then will Erika Harrsch's passport have expired.
Customs Officials for Sale Xavier Canonne
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Douaniers à vendre Pas plus que de patries, les animaux ne connaissent de frontières. Les sens interdits, les défenses d’entrer, les zones militaires leur sont aussi incompréhensibles et étrangers que ces bornes qu’ont planté les humains pour pointiller le monde et le diviser. Les frontières, quoiqu’en disent les hommes, ne sont pas naturelles : elles composent des horizons qu’il convient de dépasser, mers, montagnes et fleuves désignent des jalons à franchir et les animaux ne s’en privent pas. S’ils défendent des territoires, en traçant dans leurs errances, les animaux ne lisent pas les cartes, toujours prêts à aller plus loin, à revenir au gré des nécessités. Qui d’entre nous, tel le prisonnier en sa cellule, n’a rêvé une fois au moins d’avoir des ailes, de survoler, pareil au papillon, à l’oiseau, les villes et les mers à l’instant où il le voudrait, sans les files d’attente des aéroports, les bagages et les visas ; le vieux rêve d’Icare ne devrait pas s’encombrer de formalités administratives. C’est sans doute une grande part de l’amour que nous portons aux animaux – de la haine que d’autres leur témoignent – que cette liberté d’aller, portée jusqu’au symbole, à laquelle malgré le progrès nous ne pouvons prétendre tout à fait, et certains bien moins que d’autres : les immigrants que l’on tente de dissuader à coup de contraintes administratives, de formulaires, de tampons, d’autorisations de séjour. Quiconque a un jour franchi la frontière des Etats-‐Unis sait ce dont je veux parler… 47
Forte de sa propre expérience d’artiste mexicaine vivant et travaillant à New York, Erika Harrsch a imaginé un passeport qui unirait les trois pays traversés par le Papillon Monarque dans sa migration pour sa reproduction, le Mexique, les Etats-‐Unis et le Canada, trois pays d’Amérique du Nord confrontés à des degrés divers à la question de l’immigration. C’est en utilisant cette fois encore la métaphore de ce grand papillon migrateur qu’elle s’est tournée sur la condition des immigrés, mais aussi sur ces allers-‐retours nécessaires, ces transhumances, ces chemins sentimentaux que compliquent les Etats. Erika Harrsch n’a pas réalisé un passeport pour le Monarque qui s’en passe bien, libre encore de voyager. Par l’itinéraire de ce lépidoptère, elle a imaginé à sa propre image un passeport, unissant plutôt que les divisant les habitants des trois états, comme un autoportrait en photo d’identité. Un jour il n’y aura plus de frontières et ce jour-‐là, encore lointain, les habitants des Etats-‐Unis du monde pourront librement circuler par ces routes autrefois gardées devenues des perspectives, en contemplant en vestiges archéologiques ces poteaux-‐frontières. Alors seulement le passeport d’Erika Harrsch viendra à expiration. Xavier Canonne, Directeur du Musée de la Photographie à Charleroi, Belgique
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Erika Harrsch
www.erikaharrsch.com
"An artist that creates a World without Borders" New York Times. Born in Mexico City, Erika Harrsch has lived and worked in Mexico, Italy, Germany and since 2001 in New York. Her multidisciplinary art practice employs resources that include drawing, painting, photography, video, animation and installations as a scenario building based on elements in both artificial and natural environments. Presenting intimate aspects of the human condition, inviting and seducing the viewer to evidence their direct contact with reality through the sense perception. For more than six years Harrsch has done research with an entomologist, immersing into the world of Lepidoptera. Has used butterflies in her work as a metaphor to address matters of identity, gender, nationality, migration and the relationship of human beings upon their own nature and fragility. These visual metaphors could be perceived through a plurality of perspectives, crossing and blurring boundaries to achieve a poetic image. Harrsch has participated in several Art Biennials including: Fokus Lodz Biennale, Poland 2010; Beijing 798 Biennale, China 2009; and the 5th International Media Art Biennale-‐Media City Seoul; Korea 2008. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in Mexico, USA, Brazil, Argentina, Korea, China, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Spain, UK, Poland, Netherlands, Turkey and Syria. Presented in museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art at the Live Whitney series, Bellevue Arts Museum, WA, the Göteborg Konstmuseum in Sweden, the Museé de la Photographie a Charleroi in Belgium, the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Nevada Muaeum of Art , among others. Harrsch is the recipient of the 2014 SOTA Series award and Visiting Artist in Residence, spring 2014, teaching at the Art Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. “Erika Harrsch’s work proves that borders do not exist when it comes to artistic creation.” -‐ Art Nexus
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