A Los Angeles artist has started building a wall made out of blocks of cheese at the United States' southern border and is selling merchandise branded "Make America Grate Again" in support of the efforts.

Cosimo Cavallaro is building a 6-foot high, 3-foot wide wall made of expired cheese blocks, a Facebook page for the artistic project says. The cheese costs $100 per block and organizers initially had the funds to build a 25-foot long wall, a website for the project says.

“The first thing that comes to your mind is that it’s absurd,” Cavallaro told the Los Angeles Times, which reports the cotija cheese wall is being built in southeastern San Diego County, mere feet from border with Mexico. Cavallaro said that both his wall and President Donald Trump's proposed border wall with Mexico are similarly pointless.

The goal of the Cheese Wall project is not to be directly political, but rather to react to the "political environment" of the current moment, according to promotional materials for the project.

"The simplicity of the wall is that it shows and exposes the waste," Cavallaro said in a promotional video. "I don't like walls. So this is a wall that I can handle. This is a wall that I'm willing to live with. Because this wall is a perishable – it will not last."

A website for the project says a goal of the Cheese Wall is to start dialogue and conversations.

Organizers of the Cheese Wall project say they hope to raise enough funds to extend the wall to 1,000 feet. In addition to selling merchandise – some of which uses the symbol of a cheese grater in its "Make America Grate Again" slogan – a GoFundMe is raising funds for the project.

Cavallaro has repeatedly used perishables in art installations previously, according to the project's website. Press clippings from 2007 show he was criticized for a project involving a life-size sculpture of Jesus that was made out of chocolate.