Grammar of Gates explores the overlapping territories, languages and conflicts that mark the desert border between Mexico and the US which occupies the ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation, an indigenous people living on the Sonora-Arizona borderlands.

The artist weaves together excerpts from the film Geronimo Jones (1970) with drone and surveillance-like imagery of the landscape, drug smuggling routes and an affectless recitation of phrases taken from A Practical Spanish Grammar for Border Patrol Officers, the language of power that defines and controls the border gates.

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Video: https://vimeo.com/443887754

Interview: https://www.ballroommarfa.org/wp-content/uploads/MFC_INTERVIEW-1.pdf