Drawing the Line: Rael San Fratello at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Drawing the Line brings together the boundary-defying work of architecture and design studio Rael San Fratello, presented at SFMOMA in 2021. The exhibition examines the U.S.-Mexico border not merely as a political boundary, but as a site of creative resistance, cultural exchange, and human connection.

Through installations, objects, and speculative designs, Rael San Fratello transforms the wall into a canvas for reimagining what borders mean — and what they could become. The work ranges from the widely celebrated Teeter-Totter Wall, in which pink seesaws bridged the border fence allowing children and adults on both sides to play together, to 3D-printed adobe structures that draw on the shared material heritage of the borderlands.

The exhibition invites visitors to reconsider the border as a place of encounter rather than exclusion, and to reflect on the role that design and architecture can play in humanizing contested spaces.