crossings

Every U.S. Land Port of Entry serves as a gateway into the United States and is a place where two nations meet. Working with the design team at Morphosis Architects, artist Ann Hamilton created this expansive woven mural for the Main Building’s lobby. The 144-foot-long artwork follows the serpentine curves of the ceiling soffit, connects the public waiting area to the officers’ workspace, and serves as a visual focus of the lobby.

In crossings, Hamilton explores our relation to borders and edges, and their potential to define, organize, and connect — but also to separate and divide. An international border marks the geographic boundary between two nations, much like a horizon line divides the land and water from the sky, or a garment separates and protects the body from the world outside. Cloth coverings are common to all human bodies in all cultures. The secondhand clothing woven together, by hand, in this artwork includes uniform articles donated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection staff, and connects to this specific place and the people who work here. The weaving is dense and textural, and fragments of the material’s former use as clothing — sleeves, pant legs, collars — emerge from the linear motion of the composition. The artwork’s abstract gradation of colors, from white to indigo, evokes the line of the horizon only perceptible at a distance, a soft threshold that divides sunset from twilight, twilight from dusk, dusk from dark.