Mexican artist Stefan Brüggemann has created red, white and blue neon lights of the words truth and lie for an artwork unveiled on the US-Mexico border on the day of the 2020 US presidential election.
Featuring the colours of the American flag, Brüggemann's artwork was unveiled to coincide with the US presidential election, which is scheduled today.
The artist, who is based in Mexico and London, created the words lie and truth because he wanted to show the notion of these words have "lost meaning" in political campaigns leading up to the event.
"I came up with the idea of the installation after observing and absorbing how so many of the political narratives in the world in these last few years have brought truth and lies into question, and shifted their meaning," Brüggemann told Dezeen.
"These powerful words, LIE and TRUTH have eroded into a meaningless word – or shifted polarities – now perhaps the lie is the truth and the truth is the lie," he added. "The relevance is that these words have lost their meaning in many ways."
TRUTH/ LIE is installed in Tijuana, a city in Mexican state Baja California that borders the US – a location Brüggemann chose to further emphasise the meaning of the work.
"The location in Tijuana attracted me as I liked the idea of how the piece would be understood on a physical, geographical border – reflecting the idea of blurring boundaries, of language losing its clarity, and how the meaning of the two words have eroded one another, their meaning blending into each of the two words," he explained.
As shown in an accompanying video, the neon lights are elevated on stilts atop a building known as the tunnel house, which Brüggemann said previously served as an illegal physical connection between the US and Mexico.
Brüggemann's choice of site on the US-Mexico border also has significance because a key commitment in US president Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign was that a wall would be built between the two countries.
A number of architects and designers have come up with conceptual and real proposals to challenge Trump's US-Mexico border wall.
They include the installation of pink seesaws across the border wall so that children on either side can play together, a 1,954-mile-long dinner table and a flat-pack Ikea kit.