from “Border Disputes and the Unlikely Lives of Transient Objects” by Andrew Berardini:

“Artist Camilo Ontiveros work meets somewhere in the intersection of material, desire, and political economies. His projects deals in border disputes and the unlikely lives of transient objects. Often abandoned or reused in a way never intended, the objects and spaces that fascinate Ontiveros hang suspended from walls and ceiling, their textures and unlikely stories riffing on art as object, but taking it one step beyond. 

Mattresses, like the ones Ontiveros uses, found on the side of the road in Los Angeles are collected, wrapped up tightly into balls with rope, stacked in the back of a truck, and taken across the border to Mexico, where they are without value in one context, taken across the border, the contexts shift and the value changes. In Mexico, they still retain value, the process of collection, importation, and distribution on the informal economy is one where the collector can turn profit for his troubles. But Ontiveros, perhaps taking a cue from the streetside entrepreneur, has claimed these mattresses as well and made them into art, shifting their value from one state to another. Ontiveros’ work compliments the entrepreneur, but takes the value in a different, less direct direction. 

These political realities are further acknowledged in the play of the series title Deportables, which combines “deport” with “portable.” Though one is a person that’s expelled from a country and the second is a thing that can be moved, make no mistake that the ease in which the object can be moved across borders is not shared by its human counterparts, no matter how like objects they may sometimes be treated.”