The workspace before I explode it f. tour poster I designed for Jeremy Dutcher, printed by Tajliya Jamal
Firstly, extreme gratitude to the Institute of American Indian Arts for being so generous and flexible and letting me do this residency digitally even though I ache, I yearn, I so desperately wanted this to all be in person. Borders have always been sites of violence and control and while the circumstances for me are no where near the circumstances for people in precarious statuses across Turtle Island facing deportation at the hands of fascist fucks, it’s been a strange reality to hold question the safety of crossing a border for such a unique opportunity.
Did you know? That the US and CA governments have a country-to-country agreement to share criminal records with one another at the border? Any border guard can look it up. What is also included in this, even if you aren’t convicted and don’t have anything officially on your record, your police interactions still show up. While I was able to go through a process called “diversion” in the BC Courts that does not result in a criminal record, my arrest from a pro-Palestine protest in May of 2024 itself still shows up at the border as a “police interaction”. They won’t have all the details, but my digital presence is also pretty easy to decipher.
I don’t know what specifically will come of it, but it will be in the back of my mind with the many increasing reasons why crossing the border has become more fraught; between the records check and being trans while making art about…being Indigenous, trans, anti-fascist…you get the picture. That’s not even a great situation to be navigating on this side of the border. Anti-trans rhetoric and legislation is quickly taking ground up here as well, and during the last couple years of Vancouver’s current bitcoin obsessed mayor and city council, the police budget has increased by 44%! Yay!!!!
Anyways. Excited for this little chapter of my life and wish I could be there. Keep a eye out for when these AIR opportunities open up again at IAIA!