If it's not urging Mexico to foot the bill, or upending one of the country's most biodiverse regions, President Trump's border wall is a physical construction that is inching closer and closer to realization. But where there is controversy and a 30-foot-high, 700-mile-long barrier, artists will look to overcome.Artist Maddy Kramer isn't having any trouble making her voice heard on the subject. The art director is undertaking a project encouraging artists to imagine their own, non-constrictive wall. The Most Beautiful Wall will live in the digital sphere, but will span 1,926 virtual miles, or approximately the length of the real-life Mexican border. Both a protest and a means for artists to voice their thoughts on the current administration, Kramer's project concentrates on unifications. "We believe walls are not meant to divide," Kramer writes in a teaser video for the project. "Walls hold art. All kinds of art."
Similar to her 2016 Woman Card project supporting Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the Oklahoma City-based artist hopes to create a sense of community and collaboration simply through the open nature of creating art. Kramer, a Miami native with Argentinian parents, learned from a young age to treasure her heritage. "I've been surrounded by diversity all my life. I am proud of my Hispanic background. So when I first heard Trump's proposal of building a border wall, I knew I had to speak up.
"Art is the purest form of expression," Kramer continues. "Each artist will have their own way of bringing a message to life, and that's what I'm looking for: A wall of diversity, that represents [how] immigrants in the US do beautiful things every day. This wall should be a testimony of every single immigrant who feels they'd much rather have a country with freedom to express themselves than a symbol of divisiveness. […] Diversity is a beautiful thing and no one should get in the way of it."
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