Borderland Opening Reception

Cinnabar is pleased to present “Borderland,” opening Thursday, September 1st and on view through Sunday, October 9th. This FOTOSEPTIEMBRE® solo exhibit features Sabine Senft and includes works in several different media – stone sculpture, painting, and photography.

Sabine Senft’s work investigates the harsh realities that immigrants face when crossing the US/Mexico border, where crossing is now eight times more likely to result in death than it was ten years ago. Senft began this body of work in 2013 with a trip to the Marfa borderlands, which brought back childhood memories of family tragedies associated with the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. She has continued to engage in extensive research and experimentation since then in order to create her unique representations of these realities at the border.

Senft takes unsettling symbols and images that deal with immigration and overlays them with beautiful, spirited landscape scenes shot in West Texas, leaving the viewer to choose which layer of reality to interact with. Each piece is framed by a halo of bullets, reminiscent of violence and tragedy. They cast stark shadows that symbolize the fence that physically exists along the border, thereby creating a three-dimensional sculptural interpretation of the US/Mexico border. The subtle yet distinct use of gold leaf on Senft’s pieces hearkens back stylistically to the German Bauhaus, and the rectangular shapes and irregular cracks in the leaf act as portals into the multilayered mixed media works.

Creation of this exhibit and work was made possible in part by an Award from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio.