Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Back to Scholarship

Immigrant Invisibility and the Post-9/11 Border in Sandra Fernandez’s Coming of Age

This article examines contemporary artistic representations of territoriality and migration. The rise in surveillance of undocumented migrants in the post-9/11 United States produces mechanisms of invisibility and redeploys the border as a movable center of power. I trace this geopolitical shift in territorial representation through the work of Ecuadoran American artist Sandra C. Fernandez, whose print Coming of Age (Transformations) (2008) stages the city of Austin, Texas, as an expanding American metropolis, attracting immigrants in search of work, but insistent on obscuring their presence. Made at the Austin-based workshop Coronado Studio, Coming of Age dialogues with the work of fellow resident artists Ester Hernandez and Tony Ortega, who share an interest in migration and trade liberalization. But in contrast, Fernandez offers a vivid example of the reterritorialization of the nation’s borders, and further connects these notions of territory to historical forms of racial oppression.