James Drake
Juárez/El Paso (Boxcar)

Juárez/El Paso (Boxcar)

© James Drake / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Juárez/El Paso (Boxcar)
Juárez/El Paso (Boxcar)
ArtistAmerican, born 1946
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Juárez/El Paso (Boxcar)
Date1987–1988
PlaceEl Paso, Texas, United States
MediumCharcoal on wove paper, mounted in steel frame with coal, railroad spikes, and crowbar
DimensionsOverall: 69 × 110 × 30 in. (175.3 × 279.4 × 76.2 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Director's Accessions Endowment
Object number89.3
Not on view

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Description

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.


Provenance Research Ongoing Exhibition History"James Drake," La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, January 20–April 19, 1989.

"Darkness and Light," The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, January 23–March 28, 1993.

"Tradition and Innovation: A Museum Celebration of Texas Art,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 17–May 6, 1990.

"Finders/Keepers," The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, May 10–August 3, 1997.

"The Passionate Adventure of the Real: Collage, Assemblage, and the Object in 20th Century Art," The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, October 18, 2003–February 8, 2004.

"James Drake: Steel & Fire," New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, October 28, 2011–April 22, 2012.

"US/Mexico Border, Mapping, Portraits of a Struggle," The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Oct. 28, 2020 – July 27, 2021. [Inaugural Installation: Kinder Building 309: No Catalog]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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