A cartography of loss in the Borderlands
…Local artists and curators…have taken on the task of remembering the [Mexicali] region’s departed waters. Since 2020, [they] have overseen the Archivo Familiar del Río Colorado, or Colorado River Family Album, a project that brings together contemporary art, environmental education and historical research to document bodies of water that are disappearing or are already gone … In 2024, an exhibition at Planta Libre will collect archival documents and artwork that engages with water and its loss. Local artists will lead a series of walks in the surrounding region so that visitors can develop their own relationship with it … the absence of the Colorado River and the waters it nourished forms a cartography of loss that is written on the landscape. Their mission is to make those absences visible — to keep their memories alive, and to imagine possibilities for the future.