In 2011, Tampico, Mexico-born artist Ana Teresa Fernández was struck with the idea to erase the U.S.-Mexico border by painting the man-made structure the same color blue as the sky.
Wearing a black little dress and matching pumps, Fernández turned a 30-foot-long and 20-foot-high section of iron fence into a piece of heaven using a generator and a spray gun. From a distance, the painted section blends in with the horizon behind it, giving the illusion that part of the wall has been cut down.
News of “Borrando la Frontera” in Tijuana—a site where “personal, national and gender histories intersect” for the feminist artist—soon made its way to groups of collaborators interested in doing the same.
After a second iteration circa 2015, according to VICE, more and more people reached out to Fernández and she organized a collective effort to “bring down the sky” simultaneously. Groups in Mexicali, Agua Prieta, and Ciudad Juárez painted 40- to 50-foot-long sections of the frontier sky-blue, collectively rubbing out the border.