For more than three decades, James Drake has mined the complexities of the Texas-Mexico border culture of El Paso and its neighboring Ciudad Juarez in a series of stark installations, videos, and powerful drawings. Drake moved with his family from the Texas Panhandle to El Paso in the 1960s.

 In the mid-1980s, Drake began a project titled Juarez/El Paso, which responded to specific border events. During the summer of 1987, 18 undocumented immigrants suffocated to death when the boxcar in which they were hiding was sidelined outside the town of Sierra Blanco, near El Paso. One man survived, and he later recounted that the ìcoyoteî who had arranged their passage deliberately locked the boxcar, throwing them a crowbar before closing the door.

Juarez/El Paso (Boxcar) memorializes this incident. Drake offers a vivid image of the isolated boxcar. Drawn in charcoal and framed in steel, it has a material affinity with the actual coal, railroad spikes, and crowbar that are placed in the foreground. The two-part drawing and installation forces the viewer to empathize with the men who lost their lives trying to enter the United States.