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Canadian Artist, Cosimo Cavallaro, Building Wall Of Cheese At U.S.-Mexico Border

It will take 9,000 blocks of spoiled Cotija cheese to make the wall of curd.

As border walls go, this one's pretty cheesy.

A Montreal-born artist who specializes in works made from cheese and other edibles started building a quarter-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border on March 25.

Cosimo Cavallaro said his giant cheese wall is being built in Tecate, Calif., 45 feet from the real border at Tecate, Mexico.

He's starting with 200 blocks made from Cotija, a hard style of Mexican cheese, and figures he will need to 8,800 more blocks to complete his vision. All of the cheese will be expired cheese from vendors.

"A cheese wall is something I've wanted to do for 20 years," Cavallaro told HuffPost. "When you come to a barrier or a boundary, you want to expand beyond it."

But he didn't get his "whey" until U.S. President Donald Trump started demanding a border wall.

"Trump's demand gave me a context for this, the emotional impact," Cavallaro said.

Cavallaro, the son of Italian immigrants, grew up in Montreal and now lives in Los Angeles. Other notable projects of his include a life-sized, anatomically correct sculpture of Jesus made of chocolate and a room painted entirely with ketchup.

His experience as the child of immigrants, and as an immigrant to the U.S., informed his art.

"As a Canadian-Italian in Quebec, it was very difficult. Oftentimes, I was told to leave Quebec because I'm not from there," he told CBC News.

"That was a strange feeling β€” being born there and because you're a son of immigrants, you're told to leave."

Cavallaro started building his wall of curd at 4 p.m. Pacific time and streamed it on Facebook.

He told CTV News the first day at the actual border wall was "very threatening," but his project helped calm his nerves.

"Then after the third day of stacking these blocks of cheese it was comforting to have that wall of cheese there. It made me feel more secure."

He said he would like to keep the wall going but admitted there is the possibility it may fall apart or animals might eat parts of it.

But that, to him, is part of the artistic process.

"That's what humans do," he explained. "We consume, and then we waste. I just hope the cheese wall feeds you in another way."

With files from Sima Shakeri.

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