How Artists Rethink the Border's Water Crisis

Taking back the Rio Grande/Río Bravo as a river, not a border checkpoint.

Still from Treaty of Friendship/Tratado de Amistad, Ingrid Leyva and Nicole Antebi, 2024. Courtesy of the artists.

Water infrastructures and the documents that oversee them carry heavy conceptual baggage. Reservoirs, dams, and canals symbolize colonial mastery over landscapes. They make grandiose promises of modernity. They are emblems of inequality and …