This paper explores the work of two Latin visual artists,  Eugenio Dittborn’s Airmail paintings and Cecilia Vicuña’s ‘circular’ letters.  Dittborn’s Airmail paintings specifically engage with the letters ability to cross multiple geographic locations.  Vicuña’s literally circular shaped letters were a direct response to a Chilean government mail out following the death of President Allende.  The focus of my research are Latin American artists and makers drawing upon their experience of exile, migration and culturally diverse heritage to challenge notions of the centre and periphery.  My research also explores my own personal experience of migration through collected family letters exchanged during the first year after migrating to Australia from Uruguay.

The forms in which these letters are written, delivered and exchanged are explored as strategies of resistance and survival.  Through making visual artwork in response to collected correspondence, I am attempting to tease out the politics of the experience of letters across borders. How can the individual and collective narratives, shared knowledge and experiences embedded within these letters impact on our understanding of established and unexpected borders or places of cross-over?