I had to go. I was already on my way to San Diego when I first heard about the opening. JR had posted a photo on Instagram of a 65' toddler posed looking over the US/Mexican border in a town called Tecaté.
"Each time I’ve seen walls that have caught my attention, or that I’ve heard about a lot in the media, they would stick in my mind. I would even dream about it. When Trump started to talk a lot about a wall along the Mexican border, one day I woke up and I saw a kid looking over the wall. I was wondering, What is this kid thinking? What would any kid think? We know that a one-year-old doesn’t have a political vision, or any political point of view. He doesn’t see walls as we see them."
JR from the NYT article The Artist JR Lifts a Mexican Child Over the Border Wall
My friends that I was staying with were also excited about the news of giant art on a dirt road in a border town, so we set off the next morning to find it. The highway off-ramp becomes a dirt road and the dirt road is long and bumpy.
We made it to the installation and it was incredible. Huge and perfectly placed on the wall in Mexico looking over to the fence. We chatted with the security guard in Mexico through the fence. Eventually, a couple of border patrol SUVs came on the US side prompting us to leave.