TUCSON, Ariz. — Constructed and divided environments essentially become conversations hinged on power, of which borders are often a central manifestation. For Tucson-based multidisciplinary artist Nazafarin Lotfi, this relationship to land and landscape — and the ways it is constructed and divided, specifically in the Southwest — illuminate the tension between the natural world and the world manipulated by humans.

“The border was interesting to me as someone who carries the border within herself,” Lotfi told Hyperallergic in an interview, relating her experiences as a person growing up in Iran and as someone who immigrated to the United States, and the parallels and differences to the environment she currently resides in. “I have always wished there were more intersectional conversations around border crossing and borders in general.”

Borders, their birth, and their fortification are inextricably linked to and perpetuated by colonization, imperialism, and nationalism. In Western art history, fabricated representations of “wilderness” and “vacant” landscapes in the United States enabled, emboldened, and endorsed manifest destiny and western expansion, creating a narrative that if these lands were empty of peoples (which of course, they were not), then they are for the taking.

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