LANDSCAPE SECTION: BORDER: PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN (TORA BORA) (2008)

Wood, plywood, foam, plastic, metal, paint, branches, dirt, and other natural materials.
4′ × 2′ × 5′

The Border: Pakistan/Afghanistan (Tora Bora) sculpture draws upon documentation of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border landscape by the international press.  This border continues to be central to the United States’ politics and its policies. Particularly pertinent to most U.S. citizens is the valley of Tora Bora, where Bin Laden was believed to take refuge. This series reflects upon a landscape that has become an icon within people’s psyche.

This sculpture is part of a series of miniaturized landscape sections representing the borders/crossings between countries in varying degrees of conflicts with their neighbor. In this series, each of the borders is symbolic of significant global issues in the world today, which have been placed by the media in the mind’s eye of the world’s public. These borders have unintentionally becomes world icons. They are often barren lands devoid of people except for the occasional border outpost, border crossing station, or border town. Their barrenness is often due to defensive design, or to lack of infrastructure and accessibility. Most of these borders have flourishing environments unhampered by man, and not destabilized by urbanization and industrialization. These sculptures take a section from nature as a still image of an environment in transition: either being destroyed or healing.