We didn’t cross the border…

We didn’t cross the border... is my first large-scale ceramic project, developed as a continuation—or prototype no. 2—of El muro, the piece I initiated during my residency at The Lab Program in Mexico. While El muro explored the fallen-wall in its material, political, and social dimensions, this new work shifts the focus toward the ground as a site of memory and resistance.

Conceived as a floor installation, the work consists of handmade tiles (34 x 34 cm / 13.4 x 13.4 in), painted with pigments on majolica under the guidance of artist and professor Salvador Jiménez. By situating the imagery beneath the viewer’s feet, the project seeks to redirect the gaze downward and invite a reconsideration of our relationship with the ground we stand on, ground that is always already marked by histories of displacement, migration, and struggle.

The title references the well-known phrase “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” evoking the experience of being crushed and displaced as part of migration. In this sense, the project does not merely reproduce a political statement but materializes it.