The art of James Drake lives in the borderlands. This is not just because so much of his work of the past 40 years has been inspired, in theme and content, by Drake’s time living along the US/Mexican border in El Paso, Texas. The borderlands are not just an imaginary line drawn in the earth between two countries. Borders appear between people: where bodies meet, where skin touches. They appear in ecosystems: where a wetland turns back into desert. They occur in our own minds: where two ideas encounter and resist one another. Borders arise along lines of tension, the places where desires meet.
"Que Linda la Brisa" (How Lovely the Breeze), on view May 31 - June 30, 2019, is an exhibition of James Drake’s drawings focused on the human figure. The majority of the pieces in the exhibition are a new interpretation of Drake’s photo-series of twenty years ago which focused on the population of transgender sex workers who live and work in Ciudad Juárez on the border across from El Paso.
