Bricozaje: Between Contested Terrains and Aesthetic Borderlands

Abstract

This essay examines public artworks by Jari “WERC” Alvarez and Geraldine “Gera” Lozano in San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas. It theorizes “bricozaje,” a concept that combines the terms “bricolage” and “mestizaje,” to argue that the artists enact a reparative relationship to the works’ sites through their use of imagery. The essay first looks at Alvarez’s and Lozano’s sketchbooks to trace bricozaje’s valences as a material practice and critique of bricolage. It proceeds to examine bricozaje as a collaborative practice through the creation of La Entrada (2009), a mural project in San Diego. It then contextualizes the public art project Bright Women (2011) in relation to representations of the US-Mexico border, and concludes by articulating how bricozaje acts as a formal strategy through Lozano’s engagement with gendered iconography.