The Design Museum of London has announced the winners of the 2020 Beazley Designs of the Year, with winning designs reflective of a year with no shortage of large problems facing the globe. The Impossible burger 2.0, and virus Sars-CoV-2 rendered in 3D are examples of the strange new world we live in. The overall winner, however, is more demonstrative of how futile border walls are at keeping us apart. And no border wall still in existence is as polemic as the one snakes across some parts of the Mexico-USA dividing line.
Teetertotter Wall by Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello with Colectivo Chopeke is a set of three bright pink teeter-totters snaked across the USA-Mexico border between El Paso and Cuidad Juarez. Border security and immigration policy has always ignited debate on both sides, only becoming more intense as twice impeached President Trump made erecting a fortified border wall, paid by Mexico, a major campaign promise. When the Teetertotter Wall was finally deployed in 2019, that promised wall was still more hateful fodder than actual reality.
Though the timing might seem like a jab at the outgoing president, it was conceived in 2009 and took a decade to execute. The border wall is meant to separate folks with similar cultures and backgrounds, people divided only by laws and by force. The pink teeter-totters proved more powerful by bringing together Americans and Mexicans on either side, united in joy while also divided by the hate of others.
Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition will be held virtually until March 28th, 2021, due to UK COVID restrictions currently in place.