Artist Paints U.S.-Mexico Border Fence ‘Invisible’

Mexican artist Ana Teresa Fernández is attempting to paint a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in along so that it appears invisible, CBS News reports.

“This wall has become a symbol of pain, a symbol where we lament the lives who have not been able to cross it,” the San Francisco-based Fernández said, calling the fence a “tombstone.”

Painting border fences and walls is not a new phenomenon. In Israel, residents of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo were forced to erect a wall in 2003 after their homes were hit with sniper fire from a nearby Palestinian village. They painted the wall to resemble the picturesque view of the village they had lost as a result.

More commonly, fences and walls are painted as mere graffiti–or as a sign of protest. Fernández had earlier painted a section of the border fence on the beach in Tijuana, in a process she calls “pulling down the sky.”

A group called Border Community Alliance commissioned the 34-year-old Fernández to paint the fence, and Mexican authorities did not object.