7 pm | FREE 

Directed by Sam Wainwright

74 min | 2017 | USA 

View trailer here.

Through the Repellent Fence follows art collective Postcommodity as they construct Repellent Fence, a two-mile long outdoor artwork that straddled the U.S. -Mexico border. Postcommodity consists of three Native American artists who put Land art in a tribal context. In 2015 the artists worked with communities on both sides to install a series of twenty-eight huge inflatable spheres emblazoned with an insignia known as the “open eye” that has existed in indigenous cultures from South America to Canada for thousands of years. The artwork crossed the border a mile in each direction and symbolized a suture stitching back together cultures that have inhabited the land long before borders were drawn.

*Post-film discussion with Elena Shtromberg, associate professor of art and art history, and Monty Paret, associate dean in the University of Utah Honors College and associate professor of art and art history.

Presented in partnership with Utah Film Center.