Jacinda Russell
Jacinda made a stop in 2019 while traveling across the country with an inflatable globe. For this leg of the journey, the globe was filled with helium. Co-Director Ted Springer got to play Earth wrangler for a day! Check out Jacinda's website for more of Metaphorical Antipodes
A Chapter from Metaphorical Antipodes
The Land with No Name resides on the ancestral lands of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Ted and Kate's respect for this and the ongoing relationship between the Nation's members and this land were compelling reasons to photograph the helium balloon there. Currently the Tohono O’odham Nation’s land extends into Mexico and the U.S. government’s new immigration laws prevent them from roaming freely, cutting off communities and food supplies. Ted introduced me to Thomasa Rivas, and I listened to her stories about living as an O'odham community member in this area, asking her what constitutes a perimeter, and how the environment has changed with a more watchful eye on undocumented migrants passing through. I transcribed her story and used it to illustrate a photograph of a wall that I built in my basement from Popsicle sticks and copper wire. This construction was overlaid onto an image of The Land With No Name. My goal was to blur the boundary lines between two countries showing a melded culture and an historical and political divide.
*a fuller visual scope of Jacinda’s ongoing Metaphorical Antipodes project, including elements discussed above, is available on her website.
"The white people’s world will end but not ours. That’s what the elders say. The wall is a smoke screen one to two miles in. The piece of shit president, I don’t even want to call him that…the piece of shit, some of my own people have voted for this piece of shit. The wall, in my heart of hearts, will not happen. We are still too strong. There are three sonar towers in my village. The wall is metal and looks like steel poles. The Border Patrol is raping the desert, they drive where they want and park where they want. Some people are for the border wall because of the ransacking of homes. We have rangers called the Wolf Pack and they are trained to track. The government should hire more of our tribe. They should show us more respect. It’s a bleak future. It’s the white people who rape the land. Their world will end but the Nation’s won’t because of the way we live."
Thomasa R., Tohono O’odham, Tucson, Arizona, July 2019