Hugo Crosthwaite

Crosthwaite's artistic practice is centered on drawing, from large murals executed in public spaces to small drawings mixing observation and fantasy. Based in Tijuana, Mexico, the busiest border with the United States, Crosthwaite devotes most of his work to the subject of human migration and its related themes of hope and violence. The sources of his style and imagery range from nineteenth-century painting (Goya, Delacroix, Gustave Doré) and Surrealism, to comic books, cartoons, and street signage. Borderlands No. 3 belongs to a series combining realistic evocations of Tijiuana with superimposed, cartoony imagery -- here large feet representing the migrant population. A tall billboard seen from the back at center symbolizes U.S. colonization, though seen from a backstage point of view. Its topical subject links it to the long tradition of drawings made to convey social or political messages.