VERGE, a group show at The Border Project Space on Bogart street, closes this week on April 7. On view this past month, five immigrant artists comment on borders, territories, immigration, people, and edges using various mediums. The wall Trump is currently imposing on our country calls for exclusivity and radical nationalism. However, “Verge inverts the concept of a wall as a barrier, transforming it into a platform for the convergence of human experience which was created with 1300 clay bricks,” as stated in the press release.

In August of 2014, two years and three months before Donald Trump became president, he tweeted “SECURE THE BORDER! BUILD A WALL!” Flash forward to 2019, where the president partially shut down the United States Government for 35 days after the House of Representatives  declined to fund the $5.7 billion wall Trump promised with his presidency. “The funny thing is that the day we opened this show was the day that Trump declared the Border Wall emergency. What perfect timing,” curator and Border Project founder,  Jamie Martinez told Bushwick Daily.

The five artists featured in VERGE are Anna Costa e Silva, Iván Sikic, Fanny Allié, Qinza Najm, and Saks Afridi. All of the artists are immigrants to America and were asked to be a part of the show by Martinez. “The idea behind this exhibition is to invert the concept of a wall as a barrier by transforming it into a platform to display five immigrant artists’ work,” Martinez said. “To me, border control at this moment is a heated conversation about the wall which is why I curated this exhibition, as a rebuttal to that conversation. I know that borders have to be controlled but not in an abusive way.”