Cosimo Cavallaro wants to build a structure stretching just over 300 metres (1,000 feet) using bricks of less-than-fresh Cotija cheese, a hard and crumbly cow’s milk cheese from the Mexican state of Michoacán.

The construction site is a stone’s throw from the actual border in Tecate, California.

Cavallaro has set up a GoFundMe to raise $300,000 so he can complete the project.

He said: “When art becomes reality is that special moment when there is no return. A lot of art is just an object in space, you can move it from one place to another, however, when you cover a room in cheese or ketchup or any other perishable, you can’t rip that off, the experience is so real and lives in our minds where the only way to experience it again is through photographs. We have an expiration date here in our planet and the only way we can last is through a documentation of our being. This wall is a documentation of our times, this is a moment where we are talking about an issue, about walls.

“Every time I use my hands I see my grandparents. I see the builder and I see the cook. I am using these hands to make art. They were also making art; it was just a functional art and it was useful to people. One was making food to consume and the other one was making for things to last… a bridge, a wall, a retaining wall. I am doing it differently in a way that I know how to live my life, in the way it makes sense to me, I express my voice in that way.

“As an immigrant child, we were always look upon us as outsiders. I understand the outsider point of view very very well. I’ve never fit in, in fact what I’ve learnt is that if you want to fit in, you must stand out to fit in.

“I don’t like walls. So this is a wall that I can handle, this is a wall I can live with, because this wall is a perishable, it will not last. The cheese is spoiled. It just means that for the regulations it’s not to be consumed.”