One Flew over the Void (Bala perdida [Stray bullet]),

2005

Raised by psychologists who introduced him at a relatively young age to the hospitals where they worked, Javier Téllez explores the conditions surrounding mental illness and probes lingering biases against the disabled. He has described his videos and performances as "passports" that allow "those outside to be inside." <em>One Flew Over the Void</em>, a riff on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, <em>One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest</em>, began as a series of workshops with patients from a hospital in Tijuana, Mexico. Together with the artist, they planned a performance that began with a parade and circus and concluded with the launching of human cannonball David Smith over the Mexico/U.S. border. Over the course of these events, boundaries between countries, as well as boundaries between center and margin, normal and aberrant, and us and them, are crossed. Téllez’s work also conflates the status of immigrants and the mentally ill, both of whom inhabit a legal, psychological, and geographical limbo.