The Men’s Arts Council (MAC), a nonprofit member organization of Valley philanthropists dedicated to supporting Phoenix Art Museum’s community-outreach programs through annual giving, has selected four components of artist collective Postcommodity’s artwork Repellent Fence/Valla Repelente (2015) to receive MAC funding earmarked for a new Museum acquisition. The large-scale installation is the 40th work acquired into the PhxArt Collection with funds provided by MAC.
“We’re very excited to help the Museum acquire this work,” said Art Harding, Men’s Art Council board president. “Repellent Fence offers an incredible opportunity for audiences to learn about Indigenous histories embedded in the work itself, while also sparking larger conversations about human-made geographic borders and how they affect communities and identity. We’re honored to bring something with such deep meaning to the Museum’s collection.”
Repellent Fence was a two-mile-long ephemeral land-art installation along the U.S./Mexico border composed of 26 bright yellow balloons that were tethered together. Each 10 feet in diameter and floating 50 feet above the ground, the balloons are modeled after the ineffectual scared eye balloons commercially sold to repel birds with bright colors and predator eyes. According to Postcommodity, they appropriated this image because red, yellow, and black are primary medicine colors among many Indigenous tribes in North and South America. Designed this way to communicate with birds—the mediators between the physical and spiritual worlds for Indigenous peoples—the work embodies the intersections of conflicting cultural, economic, and political issues.
The work premiered in 2015 bisecting the U.S./Mexico border at Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, and was presented in collaboration with Arizona State University Art Museum and supported by grants from Creative Capital, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and Art Matters. The work acted as a suture that stitches the peoples of the Americas together. Postcommodity artists Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez, and Kade Twist collaborated with the area’s civic governments, along with local schools, business owners, artists, community organizers, and community members to realize the installation and bring attention to the longstanding immigration crisis at the U.S./Mexico border, reunite two communities, and continue exploration of contested spaces. For four days, the line of monumental balloons became a beacon that, according to the artists, celebrated the “historical stewards of the land, and those who are following ancient Indigenous trade routes in search of economic opportunity.”
In summer 2024, MAC voted to help PhxArt acquire four components of the larger Repellent Fence project: two balloons, one video of an installed balloon, and one photograph.
“We are grateful for MAC’s ongoing support of Phoenix Art Museum, from exhibitions, to community-access programs, to acquisitions like Postcommodity’s Repellent Fence that expand the Museum’s collection in important ways,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, PhxArt’s Sybil Harrington Director and CEO. “MAC’s generosity is a testament to the power of community advocates to help shape arts and culture within their own city and region.”
Image credit: Postcommodity, Repellent Fence, 2015. PVC, paracord; archival ink jet print; single-channel video with sound. Museum purchase with funds provided by Men’s Arts Council
