Artists Space

Vidas Perdidas/Lost Lives:
Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo

January 19 – February 18, 1989

Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Emily Hicks
Bertha Jottar
Richard A. Lou
Victor Orozco Ochoa
Robert Sanchez
Michael Schnorr
Liz Sisco
Rocio Weiss

A folding wall is erected in the center of a gallery space. Its top features painted portraits of eight people from the waist up. Below them, the lower half of the wall is covered in white, handpainted text on a black background. The text extends onto the floor, and its bottom edge is bordered by a row of votive candles. Behind this wall, other artworks are partially visible.
Vidas Perdidas. Installation view, Artists Space, 1989. [A folding wall is erected in the center of a gallery space. Its top features painted portraits of eight people from the waist up. Below them, the lower half of the wall is covered in white, handpainted text on a black background. The text extends onto the floor, and its bottom edge is bordered by a row of votive candles. Behind this wall, other artworks are partially visible.]

In Vida Perdidas/Lost Lives, BAW/TAF explores many of the issues surrounding the undocumented worker in a large scale multi-media installation. Their piece examines the physical as well as the spiritual death that many undocumented workers suffer once they cross the border.

San Diego's Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo (BAW/TAF) is a multi-disciplinary group of Chicano, Mexican and American artists whose goal is to establish the Mexican-American border region as a viable forum for intercultural communication. The group has met regularly since 1984 to formulate ideas for their collaborative works (multi-media events and installations incorporating performance and video) which appear in traditional galleries as well as at site-specific locations in the border region. Their work comments upon the images of the border region that have been created by the mass media.

Vidas Perdidas Postcard

Vidas Perdidas Press Release

Vidas Perdidas Leaflet Cover

Vidas Perdidas Catalogue Cover

Vidas Perdidas Gallery Plan

Artists Space programs are made possible by: the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, New York State Council on the Arts, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; AT&T Foundation, Inc., The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion, The Bohen Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., Horace w. Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, Jerome Foundation, The J.M. Kaplan Fund, The Dorothea L. Leonhardt Foundation, Inc., The Joe and Emily Lowe Foundation, Inc., The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, The Menemsha Fund, Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Betty Parsons Foundation, The Reed Foundation, Inc., The Rockefeller Foundation, The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc., and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.; American Express Company, The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., Equitable Real Estate Group, Inc., General Atlantic Corporation, R.H. Macy and Company, Inc., Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, Philip Morris Companies Inc., and U.S. Trust Company of New York; as well as Artwatch, Galleries in Support of Artists Space, Members and numerous Friends.

Artists Space is a member of the National Association of Artists Organizations (NAAO) and the National Alliance of Media Arts Centers (NAMAC).