Three pink seesaws connect Mexico with the USA passing through the wall. This is the project that won the Design of the Year Award, a prize awarded by the London Design Museum every year. Now, what is this project about? And what is its significance?
And the winner is… the seesaw that tears down the Mexican Wall!
# Teeter totter wall: the seesaw that brings together what politics divides
The project consists in three lightweight but solid pink seesaws with the central pole inserted between the mesh of the barrier. This way, their seats rise and fall on either side. The piece of art made by Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello is called Teeter totter wall and it links El Paso, in Texas, with Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico.
Actually, the idea was developed 10 years ago, in 2009, after the enactment of the law providing for the construction of a barrier along the entire Mexican-American border. However, the project took shape in 2019, in the middle of the humanitarian crisis and the anti-migrant policy implemented by the now former President Donald Trump.
# What happens on one side has repercussions on the other side: here’s the message of the project
Children, but also adults, have been playing on both side of the border overcoming the six-meters wall that separates them with a game.
It was a sign of peaceful protest against walls and barriers which has conquered not only the inhabitants of the two States, but also the whole world. The piece of art remained active for only 30 minutes, but it quickly went viral on the web through photos and videos, touching the hearts of many.
Ronald Rael explained that “this way, children and adults have been able to connect in a significant manner, acknowledging that what happens on one side of the wall can have a direct consequence on the other side”.
Even the color carries a meaning: bright pink is a symbol for the femicides occurred in Ciudad Juarez. In the last ten years, hundreds of remains of women were found in the desert. Women who had been raped, killed, and buried since the 1990s. This is a true tragedy that worries the local population and that Sergio Gonzales Rodriguez reports in his book “Bones in the desert”.
#The wall as a politic symbol
The Mexican wall, also known as the wall of shame, is one of the most symbolic places of the world because it shows how political rifts can have major geographical and social repercussion.
Its construction began in 1990 under the presidency of George H.W. Bush and it was developed in the following years. Actually, for many kilometers is not a real wall. Instead, it is a barrier of enclosure which is controlled by more than twenty-thousand guards, helped by video cameras, detectors, and surveillance devices.
In the last few years, the wall has been again at the core of the political debate in the U.S. as well as worldwide. Trump promised to reinforce the border and he made a fully-fledged manifesto of this, passing off as the man who could save America from invaders when in fact he simply continued the work initiated by his predecessors.
However, in London the Teeter totter wall was elected as the best design project of 2020, just when former President Trump was leaving the White House. This award reminds the whole world that we should not build walls but bridges.
CHIARA BARONE
