Satellite Gallery and Access Gallery co-present Mexican curator Adriana Estrada Centelles’ group exhibition Broken Borders. The exhibition reflects on the sociopolitical situation that has affected Mexico, and more recently other countries, such as Canada and the United States, for the past six years—the drug war. This war has resulted in more than 40,000 deaths in Mexico and has shifted the everyday lives of Mexicans into a permanent state of alert, uncertainty and terror. Teresa Margolles, Rosa María Robles, Marcos Ramírez Erre and Jorge Malacón have depicted, through their work, some of the mechanisms of this war that refer to a more complex and global political structure. They unveil the drug war as a war machine and a new power structure of necropolitics.
Broken Borders is divided and presented in two spaces, the Satellite Gallery and Access Gallery. The main purpose is to raise awareness of this complex and global war, not only as Mexico’s social and political problem, but also as a worldwide economic model that affects all societies, including Canada. In order to experience the entire exhibition, the public will move from one gallery to another and will have the opportunity to engage differently with the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Drug trafficking and consumption is a constant and evident problem in this area of the city. Without any prejudice against illegal drug consumption, the exhibition opens up spaces of reflection on the public’s (in)direct participation that feeds violence and strengthens the expansion of the war on drugs.