Voices in Our Heads
Artist Isabella Cruz-Chong: Breaking Borders, Walls, and Chains
Brooklyn, New York-based Isabella Cruz-Chong has strung a heavy gauge chain across, up, and down inside the small white art space that is C.A.C.t.T.U.S. (Creative Arts Coalition to Transform Urban Space) founded by artist Jorge Mujica. In the window of the nondescript storefront on Elm Avenue in Long Beach, one end of the chain falls into a small pool of water scooped from Long Beach and Tijuana, Mexico along with bits of Algae. The container rests on a bed of sand, also from Long Beach and Tijuana (specifically from a neighborhood called Playas that abuts the Pacific Ocean). The chain is rusting. At another end, a plastic bag of water and algae is wrapped around the end of the heavy metal chain. You cannot help but move around and under the chain in the installation called Playas.
Isabella Cruz-Chong
I interviewed Isabella Cruz-Chong outside the storefront on Elm one afternoon as she was installing the art piece.
Art begins early for Isabella Cruz-Chong
Ms. Cruz-Chong lives in Brooklyn, New York these days but she was born in Austin, Texas. When she was about to turn four years old, she moved to Tijuana, Mexico.
“. . .And I grew up there and I was there for my entire life until I went to do my undergrad in Chicago.”
Her high school years were spent crossing the Mexico-United States border during the school week so she could attend school in San Diego. She would wake around 7 A.M., carpool thirty minutes to the border, spend up to an hour on a line to cross it, and then spend another thirty minutes driving to the San Diego high school.
“. . .For the opportunities that a school in San Diego could give me. To learn English better, to write it well. To be able to do my SATs to get a good score to go to a good University.”
Isabella Cruz-Chong wanted to be an artist at different times in her life. When she was in middle school, her parents wanted her to have extracurricular classes. She tried a few but would exit after a few months.
“But the only one that I stayed in was my oil painting class.”
It was the first time, according to Cruz-Ching, that she realized that she really enjoyed the activity of art. She was fourteen years old.
“It makes me…I calm myself.”
Encouraged by family and others, she would go on to study art after graduation from high school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Design and Photography in 2012. She would go on to the Parsons School of Design in New York to receive her Master of Fine Art in Design and Technology in 2016.
Isabella Cruz-Chong describes her art as Organic
“It’s mixed media installation. It’s interactive. It has sounds. It has raw materials such as dirt, metal, this time water and for a good amount of them, I connect them to new technologies.”
There’s a video on her artist website about a site-specific installation called Line of Breath. According to the description, it “. . .is a sound installation embedded on the Tijuana-San Diego political fence in an attempt to manifest a liminal state and give life to this often neglected in-between.”
The organic quality extends to her current installation at C.A.C.t.T.U.S., Playas.
Artist Statement: “When one experiences the Pacific Ocean waves moving through the US-Mexico border fence—dividing what seems like two opposing sides—there is no fear of permanent indifference or separation. Through this installation, Isabella Cruz-Chong deconstructs, recreates and modifies this encounter to emphasize the timelessness of change and the natural quality of interconnection. The installation consists of a brute metal chain that hangs and divides the space, carrying with it man’s compulsion to control. Closer to the ground, the chain comes into contact with natural elements, including ocean water, sand and greens from Long Beach, CA (where the piece will be exhibited) and Tijuana, Mexico (where the piece originated). At the point of physical touch between the gathered elements, the chain deteriorates, the greens grow or die, and the water embraces them all. The piece itself continuously transforms to not only address the US-Mexico border fence but also other divisions and the fears that create them. For Cruz-Chong, both Mexican and American, the process of this work disintegrates her once divided identity to create a community altar for hope and positive change.”
Isabella Cruz-Chong: Borders, Walls, and Chains
The chain symbolizes divisions.
“The is a new way how…where I’m exploring how to manifest divisions and wanting to control.”
Cruz-Chong describes the art installation as being inspired by the metal border fence between San Diego and Tijuana that goes inside the ocean (You can see a Google Earth photo of the fence creeping along into the Pacific Ocean).
“Playas de Tijuana, where I grew up, is a beach town in Tijuana. So, when you go to the corner of it which is the corner of Mexico (where it meets the United States), you see this fence go into the Pacific Ocean.”
According to Cruz-Chong, the waves of the Pacific Ocean crash up and through the fence that separates the two countries at this beach.
“That’s when I realize I have hope and I see how there’s change. There’s always going to be change. And you see the metal post rusting. And you see algae growing in it and you see the birds going through it. So, it’s a very beautiful juxtaposition for me.”
The chain represents, to the artist, intolerance or stubbornness.
“And how that same drive to create…to wanting to control, for good or bad, it doesn’t matter…just wanting to control, it can be manifested in different ways.”
It can be changed, manipulated. For Isabella Cruz-Chong, it’s not something settled.
“I see my art, I think, always doing…trying to emphasize how the divisions, we put them up and because of that, they’re organic and they’re flexible. And you have the power to put them up or down or change them.”
Lesson learned: We have the power to put up walls and take them down.
Playas by Isabella Cruz-Chong is at Creative Arts Coalition to Transform Urban Society (C.A.C.t.T.U.S.), 326 Elm Ave, Long Beach, California, now on display until its closing July 29th, 3 PM to 6 PM. Visit their website HERE.
