The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) presents The Skin of the Earth Is Seamless, bringing together eight artists—Seba Calfuqueo, Magdalena Ciemierkiewicz, Verónica Gaona, Gi (Ginny) Huo, Simon Liu, Brenda Mallory, Kara Springer, and Nardeen Srouji—who approach borders from distinct geographic, cultural, and historical positions. Rather than representing them primarily as geopolitical lines, the artists focus on what happens around and across them: what is carried or interrupted, what endures, and what is transformed or remade.

Join us for the opening reception on Tuesday, October 27 from 6–8pm.

Working across sculpture, photography, printmaking, film, and video, the artists trace the effects of division through materials, landscapes, and memory. Shifting away from documentary modes, their works employ abstraction and material transformation—including fragmentation and acts of repair—to examine the marks that displacement, extraction, and colonial violence leave behind. Borders become perceptible as objects are reassembled, images split and overlap, and fragile forms are stitched together.

The Skin of the Earth Is Seamless takes its title from Gloria Anzaldúa’s seminal book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Anzaldúa’s understanding of borderlands extends beyond geography to encompass cultural, linguistic, psychological, and spiritual experiences. For her, borderlands are sites where multiple histories and ways of being coexist and collide, giving rise to new forms of consciousness.

At a moment of intensified nationalism, forced displacement, and increasingly restrictive border regimes, the exhibition asks not only what borders divide, but what moves through them, endures despite them, and connects across them. The works consider repair not as the erasure of rupture but as an ongoing practice of adaptation and resistance. This exhibition reflects ISCP’s sustained relationships with its international community: most of the participating artists are alumni of the residency program.

The Skin of the Earth Is Seamless is curated by Melinda Lang, Director of Programs and Exhibitions at ISCP. The exhibition’s reading area was developed by Nicolas Poblete, Programs and Exhibitions Intern, in collaboration with Melinda Lang. It is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Lang and a resource bibliography by Poblete.