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Guillermo Galindo, Richard Misrach, and the San Jose Museum of Art are developing a sound installation and performance series to activate Galindo’s original instruments made from scavenged artifacts found at the United States/Mexico border. The project is part of “Border Cantos,” a cross-disciplinary exploration of the border developed by Galindo with photographer Richard Misrach. It will feature monumental, engulfing photographs shot in the borderlands by Misrach alongside ingenious musical sculptures that Galindo handcrafted from objects Misrach retrieved — a shoe, a water bottle, a comb. Through photography, sculpture, and sound, the project will create a nuanced portrait of a place and the people who traverse and patrol it. The Creative Work Fund award focuses on an audio installation featuring Galindo playing an original composition on eight of his sculptural instruments and on four live performances of his music in the galleries.

Originally from Mexico, Guillermo Galindo is a composer, performer, and sound architect. His use of sound-generating devices spans a wide-spectrum of artistic works performed and shown at major festivals and concert halls throughout the United States. Misrach and Galindo decided to work together after meeting in 2011. Misrach had begun photographing the border in 2009 as an outgrowth of a long-standing exploration of how development affects the U.S. desert environment.

An established gathering place for the myriad communities of its Silicon Valley home, the San Jose Museum of Art is well-suited to this project as its work seeks to align with the diversity and globalism of the region.