Omar Pimienta with HereIn

llantero from the series Libertinos, 2009 (project ongoing), digital photograph

[Image description: A person stands in front of the entrance to a dilapidated building. They have light brown skin and dark facial hair. They are wearing a black baseball cap, a red shirt, and jeans with dirt on the knees. Squinting in the sun, they raise a fake torch with their left hand, like the Statue of Liberty. To the left of the image is a bright orange traffic cone.]

Over the last two decades, Omar Pimienta has built a transdisciplinary practice that explores the sociopolitical landscape of the San Diego/Tijuana border region. His work draws on his own life and reaches across visual art, poetry, and scholarship to probe themes of migration and citizenship. Pimienta earned a BA in Latin American Studies from San Diego State University, as well as an MFA in Visual Arts and a PhD in Literature from the University of California San Diego. 

HereIn: You practice is deeply rooted in the neighborhood in which you grew up. Can you tell us about its history and how it has informed your work?

Omar Pimienta: Colonia Libertad is one of Tijuana’s oldest neighborhoods. It was founded due to a conflict between the workers of the racetrack and the racetrack owners. The workers needed a space to inhabitate and took over the horse stables. There was a shooting to kick them out and the Mexican government had to intervene. Eventually the land was granted to the workers and they named it Colonia Libertad, which is “liberty neighborhood.” 

For me, it had been a space of transit because my family had migrated from Jalisco, in the central part of Mexico, to the border. My family’s house had been this kind of middle ground between my parents’ little town in Jalisco and the fields in the U.S.. People would come for just two months, work in the fields, go by our house on their way to Northern California, and then on their way back to their hometown. So it had, up to a certain point, been a space of free movement. Until, of course, Operation Gatekeeper in the 1990s. Bill Clinton’s militarization of the border in the urban areas functioned as a deterrent forcing migrants to attempt their crossing through the desert, turning the act of undocumented crossing into a deadly journey. And then all of a sudden I’m faced with the question, What is freedom? What is liberty? How is it that my family ended up there? My father had come with a workers’ program as a Bracero in the 1950s and became a U.S. citizen, and I became a U.S. citizen through him. I have both passports. My whole practice has been the questioning of identity and citizenship. 

Hijo de Carmen from the series Libertinos, 2009 (project ongoing), digital photograph

[Image description: A child on a city sidewalk, with an orange fence behind them. They have light brown skin and short dark hair, and wear a blue shirt and green pants. They are smiling widely and holding a fake torch.]

The neighborhood has been really important in my work because I needed to understand the space I grew up in. It has forever been kind of an infamous space because of its proximity to the border. It has historically been separated from San Ysidro by the border and from the rest of Tijuana by the river. It has always had a close-knit relationship with the Chicano community on the other side because Colonial Libertad was founded in 1929. The year after that the Great Depression hit and a massive deportation brought people from the U.S. to the neighborhood. It was founded by really nationalistic workers but was then inhabited by repatriated Mexicans. Colonial Libertad is pretty much this extension from Logan in San Diego, this historically Chicano community, just on the Mexican side. It is, I believe, differentiated from the other neighborhoods in Tijuana in the sense that it grew isolated for many years. In a lot of Tijuana literature, it’s this no man’s land. There are short stories by many writers in which the cholos would come from Colonia Libertad to cause trouble in other Tijuana neighborhoods.

HereIn: When did you start bringing the neighborhood into your work?

Pimienta: I have a really mixed practice. I write poetry and short stories, and I’m also an academic, so I’m really into researching stuff. That need to articulate my own sense of belonging and citizenship took me in the direction of writing a poetry book on Colonia Libertad. That book won the Centro Cultural Tijuana’s publication prize in 2006. 

Lady Libertad V1, 2007-2009, plaster sculpture and digital photograph

[Image description: A figurine of the Statue of Liberty in the foreground of a landscape. The figure is a terra cotta color and stands on a gray pyramid. The landscape is a patchy field below a blue sky with white clouds. A flock of birds flies through the air behind the figurine.]

In the MFA program at UCSD, I embarked on this longer process of a research-based, community-based project called Welcome to Colonia Libertad. The first iteration of that project was in 2007. I was obsessed with creating an icon for the neighborhood. While doing research, I bumped into this sketch by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor who made the Statue of Liberty. He had sketched a couple of options for the pedestal. The actual negotiation was that France would give the statue to the U.S., but the city that got the statue would have to make the pedestal. So it was Morris Hunt, an American architect, who was assigned to the pedestal. But Bartholdi did a couple of sketches of stuff that he imagined would hold the sculpture. One of them was this pre-Columbian pyramid and it blew my mind. He appropriated the pyramid— I believe it is from Veracruz— from an architectural book that had just come out in the mid-1800s. It blew my mind because this French guy is kind of like the first Chicano artist; he’s mixing these two cultures. But it’s regardless of the actual history and the genocide that was going on at the same time. So I appropriated Bartholdi’s sketch and produced a little Statue of Liberty on top of this pre-Columbian pedestal out of plaster. Colonia Libertad has historically been a producer of plaster figure souvenirs, due to its proximity to the border. We’re losing them now, sadly, but near the border there are still many shops that make plaster figures. I worked with one of them to produce that piece. That was my first approach to making an art piece that dealt with the neighborhood itself, and then it grew. I made one that was fifteen by fifteen feet with an inflatable Statue of Liberty on top. There are now many iterations.

Lady Libertad V2, 2009, metal, wood, and vinyl, 15 x 15 x 25 ft. as a pyramid and 18 x 18 x 25 ft. as an agora 

[Image descriptions: Left: A bearded figure with light brown skin rides a tall bicycle through a town square. Behind them stands a replica of the Statue of Liberty, on top of an orange pyramidal structure. Right: A nighttime scene with a group of people in front of a warehouse. They are clustered around a replica of the Statue of Liberty on top of an orange pyramidal structure. One side of the structure is open and some people stand inside it.]

For my MFA thesis project, I did a big piece, which is a metal pyramid that opens up and becomes this agora. I was thinking about a site-specific piece that would be a monument that you could inhabit. I wanted a monument that was not an imposition; it would have to be ephemeral, so I could put it up and take it down. I set it up in about three or four hours. I made it so that it could open itself and the walls then become bleachers. You can actually inhabit it and have a discussion while the Statue of Liberty inflates and deflates. I was interested in the idea of the collapse of monuments, the cyclical aspect of it. I made that piece in 2009 and I show it only when someone in the neighborhood is organizing a festival. They ask me, “Omar, can you set up the lady?” And I do.  

Hernandez Hernan, 2013, beaurocrartistic participatory document, paper, ink, embossing, and polaroid passport photo,  5.5 x 8.5 in.

[Image description: An orange and cream-colored passport page. It says Solicitud De Pasaporte Libre, among other text, with lines for the name Hernandez Hernan Eduardo and U.S.A. It is dated Sep 06 2013. It features a headshot of a person with light skin wearing a black fedora, looking neutrally at the camera. A red Colonia Libertad logo is stamped on the right.]

HereIn: The image of the Statue of Liberty on a pyramid is also present in you project, Free Citizens. How did you move into that work, which operates very differently than these sculptures?

Pimienta: I had started really questioning monumentality. I got into a show and I said to myself, “I’m going to make something that’s really small.” So I did a stamp, like for a visa, with the same icon of Colonia Libertad— that sketch by Bartholdi— and I figured I’d stamp people’s passports. This was for Teddy Cruz’s 2011 event, The Political Equator 3, so a lot of people were going to cross the border under the fence, from north to south. I figured I’d be waiting for them on the Mexican side with my stamp. I stamped a lot of people’s passports.

Pasaporte Libre, 2012 (project ongoing), mixed media artist book, 5 x 3.5 in.

[Image description: Three passports on a gray background. One stands on the left, its red cover reading “Libre Pasaporte” with the Colonia Libertad logo, all in gold. The one in the middle is propped open. Its white pages have a crisscrossing yellow pattern on them, overlaid with stamps that say “Visas,” “Translation,” and “Original,” as well as the Colonia Libertad logo. The one on the right lays flat, open to the first page.]

That grew into the idea that I should secede from Mexico and just have Colonia Libertad be this conceptual country. So I made a passport. What I do is exchange passports; people come into the gallery, museum, or cultural center in which I set up my consulate and they give me their passport and I give them the Colonia Libertad passport. So I have this archive of free citizens, people who have been willing to trade their document, it’s usually voided documents but they have all the information. It has many layers participation, because of course it’s sensitive information and it requires a willingness. But it pretty much is the same fiction in which nations solidify themselves. So this project that started as a sculpture became this participatory, performative nation- and citizen-based piece.

Cosulado Movil/Mobile Consulate, 2015, BureaucrArtists Marcella & Omar performing as Colonia Libertad Consuls granting the Pasaporte Libre

[Image description: Two people behind a desk. One person, who has light skin, a dark beard, and pulled-back hair, stands. Their left hand rests on the shoulder of a seated person, who has light skin and shoulder-length dark hair. Both look at the camera with a neutral expression. To their left is a video camera on a tripod. On the table are various office supplies, a polaroid camera, and a red passport.]

HereIn: How do you think about medium? You’ve called some projects “bureaucr-artistic performances,” which I love. How do you choose which medium you use for different pieces? 

Pimienta: I guess it’s by need. I did my undergrad in Latin American studies and I don’t actually have a formal background in art. I grew up in an iron workshop, so I know I can manipulate metal. I feel comfortable with sculpture when it’s metal and a little bit when it’s wood. I can put stuff together because I grew up around tools and people who are constantly manipulating stuff. My older brother is the artist Marcos Ramirez ERRE, and I grew up helping him and learning the trade. He doesn’t limit himself to a specific medium. I really just mimicked his practice for the longest time. I think that’s something many Tijuana artists have in common, since the art school was funded pretty late and only in the early 2000s were people learning stuff from professors. Before that it was mostly workshops and learning from other artists who were, themselves, self-taught. There’s a freedom in absence, in knowing that no one can really tell you that it’s not well done because the art world is so fresh, so new, and free of stratified levels of mastery. 

There were, and still are, incredibly talented individuals in Tijuana who are older than me, and I grew up looking at their work. Many of them were less focused on their trade and more on what they were trying to say. The concept drove their practice. When I entered the MFA program, they asked me, “Well, what’s your studio practice?” I have a sixty percent expertise in a lot of things, but I’m not a master of anything. That’s been really liberating. Then again, I also have a poetry practice, which makes me relaxed about saying I’m a transdisciplinary artist. 

Time is Foreign from the series Sediment/o, 2021, concrete text on digital photo print, 23 x 33 in.

[Image descriptions: A brightly colored photo of a landscape with a blue sky above an estuary. White birds dot the landscape. Overlaid on the photo is text that reads “Time is foreign,” printed in a crusty gray material.]

HereIn: That brings us to your newest body of work, Sediment/o, in which you’re layering text and photographs. It feels like a new direction for you. 

Pimienta: I was working on a poetry project about the Tijuana River when I was invited by Lux Art Institute to produce a set of works. I didn’t want to move away from my poetry that much, so I figured I would do a set of pieces that deal with the Tijuana River. That was the driving force. It feels like a different project, but I still have this need to understand my space through visuals, text, and research. 

Landscape is a social construct from the series Sediment/o, 2021,  concrete text on digital photo print, 23 x 33 in.

[Image description: A brightly colored photo of a landscape with a blue sky, brushy foreground, and trees on the horizon. Overlaid on the photo is text that reads, “Landscape is a social construct,” printed in a crusty gray material.]

I grew up on the Mexican side of the border, looking at the Tijuana River as this concrete channel. A few years ago the BMW Foundation invited me to a Global Table leadership dialogue called “Transcending Borders,” basically a series of workshops with socially engaged artist-activists from all over the world. The workshops were held at the Tijuana River Estuary. I’m ashamed to say that I had never been there. I was in my thirties— how is it that I’ve never been in this beautiful space? That was the genesis of my thinking about the river as these two realities of the same geographical and natural element that has been divided by political, human decisions. The whole process of the piece was to go to the estuary, document the landscape, and think about my life. The metaphors that are just so basic; this river flows from south to north and brings with it sediment that many times creates political turmoil. The sediment is usually considered to be trash and pollutants, which neglects all the richness the sediment brings. The estuary is this beautiful because the river brings all those microscopic nutrients that end up on the American side. But that’s not talked about. It’s only talked about when the sediment in contaminated and goes onto the beach— then it’s an issue. All those parallels with migration just blew my mind. So the piece is about language and landscape, the migration history of my family as well as the history of the river, about the questioning of modernity and what that looks like on each side of the border. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity by HereIn and the artist.