Blog 8 - Border Arte

 In Border Arte Nepantla, El Lugar de la Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa discusses the opening day of Aztec: The World of Moctezuma musuem and what the museum consisted of. She says that this museum represented Mexican culture. One important aspect she discusses is how the museum greatly draws a connection between the United States and Mexico. The museum is built off of this idea Mexico is mixing with the United states forming a mixture of two cultures. Gonzalez states how she does not like the fact that in these museum curators will talk about the Atec culture like it is completely dead when there are still many Aztecs in society today.They forget to discuss the surviving Aztecs in Mexico today and only discuss it as ancient history. Anzaldua brings up a very good point in that we need to remember the people and culture that is still very much alive today. Ignoring that will make it seem like it is something in the past which is unhealthy for society to believe that an entire part of history could be erased so easily.

I found it interesting when Anzaldua begins to talk about the form of art that can be called the Nepantla state. In a way it may not be so much a form of art but a state of art that entails two cultures or places colliding. It is when an artist may be binational and create their own source of space for their work that represents this concept. These border artists are able to find their own voice and space versus what the museum she mentions first may be doing.

We also see problems with the way such art like border art is also being commercialized. In today's society we see how culture can be misrepresented or culturally appropriated which can be a downfall to popularity of border art to a certain extent. Despite the downfalls, a focus is needed when it comes to border art and the representation of culture that may be portrayed as dead but is very much alive. The message that should be fed to society is that Aztec practices for example are still very much alive and culture from the past is still being practiced and has not disappeared.