Removed Frontier

by Albert Orozco

Removed Frontier portrays a 5th-grade student’s presentation of a diorama-style project set at the U.S.-Mexico border. In the presentation, six children are seen travelling toward the United States in search of their mothers, who have left them to work in El Norte. Halfway through the presentation, the student decides to alter the narrative of his story by removing the border wall. In doing so, he illuminates the social fabrication of national borders and chooses to imagine a new reality for the children in his project. The children move freely across the new landscape to be reunited with their mothers.

Albert Orozco is an architectural designer based in Los Angeles, California who dedicates himself to exploring projects that reflect issues of the environment, racism, immigration, and identity. His current work interweaves Mexican-American histories, mythologies, and geographies with architectural design to orchestrate scenographic stories that critique colonial architecture. Specifically, he hopes to create more collaborative spaces between artists, scholars, activists, and designers to imagine more ecologically sustainable spaces for historically dispossessed communities. Albert holds a Master of Architecture and a Bachelors of Arts in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.