Round Table Discusion: Chinatown Chat, Los Angeles
MexiCali Biennial /06
Ed Gomez, Luis G. Hernandez and Pilar Tompkins
INTERVIEW WITH MEXICALI BIENNIAL ORGANIZERS – 1/29/07
E: Luis and I first started talking about putting together an art exhibition
in Mexicali, at La Casa de la Tia Tina around March of 2006, but we
had trouble coming up with exhibition titles that worked. We wanted to
somehow deal with the idea of a border because of Mexicali’s proximity
to the US/Mexican border without the project only being located inside a
larger discussion of border politics. What we were trying to do is to come
up with something that would tie in the specificity of the site and still be
open enough to allow artists to make or show whatever work they wanted.
We didn’t want a restrictive theme or title and we also didn’t want to
curate specific works, but instead invite artists to participate under one
cohesive project. We came up with a half dozen or so possible titles, none
of which worked or sounded the way we wanted. After shooting ideas
back and forth we decided to just dump what we had and go for something
very open-ended, right? We started talking about what would happen
if we were to title this exhibition that just happens to be in Mexicali, a
biennial and how that would re-contextualize the show. Would the audience
understand this art exhibition as a Biennial and how could we use
that to question how traditional Biennials function?
L: For us, the conception of this project was not as a biennial, but as an exhibition
that would comment on the conventions and mechanisms of art
biennials.
E: That was the initial proposition. An art show in Mexicali, Mexico that
has Biennial attached to it along with all the prestigious, well-recognized
baggage that Biennials have at a time when no one wanted another Biennial.
In a way putting something into play that would force the audience
to see this exhibition as a Biennial but have it function differently from
traditional programming.
P: Yes, this is a different platform than a traditional biennial. The premise
we used of taking artists from Los Angeles to exhibit them in Mexicali
(with a re-presentation of the exhibition to a Los Angeles audience accompanied
by an invitation to select Mexicali artists) is not true to the
constructs of most international biennials. But yet biennials take the pulse
of artistic production, assessing what is important regionally or allowing
artists to represent their respective nations. In a way, as the MexiCali Biennial,
we are providing artists an opportunity to respond to and simultaneously
transgress the overarching environmental context where they
produce work, which in and of itself is indicative of larger shifts within a
political and cultural moment in time. This is a paradigm that is of particular
interest to me and I was intrigued when Ed spoke with me about
the project initially with the idea of why not call it a biennial if there are
biennials springing up all over the world? It may not follow the same traditional
model exactly, or function within a highly institutionalized, heavily
funded framework, but I believe it is just as valid and as true to the
region’s open-ended nature and inventiveness to approach such a project
with the same informal, freeform practicality inherent to the bi-national
exchange that happens every day between the US and Mexico.
E: Right. It initially appears to be that. Once you get into the project, it
unfolds and you find out that it could happen on either side of the USMexico
border and it doesn’t necessarily have to happen every two years.
It can be reciprocal with artists showing on either side of the US/Mexican
border and hopefully call into question how traditional Biennials function.
We also wanted to take into consideration the exhibition sites. We
were able to do all of this without the funding or support that large institutions
have.
E: The word “MexiCali” comes from the merger of the words Mexico and
California and the city of Calexico is also that kind of merger or hybrid
between the words California and Mexico. Given that this place is called,
Mexicali, we decided to interrogate that and invite artists from California
to exhibit in Mexicali and then have artists from Mexicali exhibit in
Los Angeles.
L: And that’s where the show becomes international, not for the reasons
that other biennials are, the invitation of established or international
artists, but because of its location and reciprocity between the two cities
that host it.
E: The conditions that are already inherent to those sites.
P: For me it was really interesting to be involved in a project that is active
in a region that is so fascinating and yet hard to classify. The idea
of doing something along the border is inherently difficult and problematic
because it is not a definitive place. By nature, it is a place that
is in a constant state of flux, in a constant state of exchange, in a constant
state of metamorphosis. I think the US-Mexican border is unique
in comparison to other international borders because of the nature of
the deep dependency of the two countries for the labor force, for the
economics…it is a different kind of political relationship than, say, the
US-Canadian border. It is much more charged. There are so many things
that are happening there right now that make it more vague and more
turbulent than if you were talking about a contemporary Western European
border.
E: Yeah, we wanted to give artists the opportunity to exhibit at the border
where one country kind of bleeds into the other, where it’s not so
clearly defined like you said. We also felt that it was very important to
have the participating artists experience crossing the Mexicali/Calexico
border first hand and be present for the opening reception.
We didn’t curate specific works that dealt with the border but instead
gave artists the opportunity to create or show whatever they wanted.
If someone wanted to deal with the border as a site for their work, we
all worked hard to make that happen. For me the exchange became an
important part of the process. Having artists from LA physically go to
Mexicali and install or fabricate their work and then reciprocating by
showing Mexicali artists in LA. Artists and artworks crossing borders
back and forth.
L: That involvement was interesting because I’m pretty sure that most artists
kind of had something in mind; they had a well defined idea of what they
wanted to exhibit, and then, many of them got to the space and changed
something about their projects. They tried to accommodate their works in
relation to the space and to their experience in it
.
E: Which is the nature of everything that happened there. Nothing went
precisely as planned.
L: Yeah, this was not limited to the artists and their projects, but to the overall
preparation and installation of the exhibition.
E: Luis had a great quote about Calexico-Mexicali,
that everything is at a state of breaking down and
not working, but somehow it keeps functioning.
P: rasquache.
P: Well, it was very true to form - because it has this
nature of being in a dilapidated state, things are
less precious. It allows you to call into question the
idea of location and how precious an artist’s work
becomes once placed within that space. Is it something
that can be morphed, something that can
respond to and become activated within a different
kind of setting, one that is less traditional, and
how does it hold up in that sort of environment?
What changes when you take it off of a white wall
and put it in a less determined space? Though in
this setting we did have a gallery that had white
walls, where we displayed half of the body of work,
but that was also in relationship to the entire compound,
which was very punk rock.
E: Yeah, I like to refer to La Casa de la Tia Tina as ‘the
real’. It is not pretending to be anything other than
what it is: Very raw and still in the process of being
defined.
L: I think I mentioned in another conversation
about artists opening alternative spaces here in LA,
and it feels that they’re trying to move away from
what would be considered to be the white cube,
the clinically white space. The spaces I’m referring
to are ‘raw’ in look, and it feels that they are consciously
moving away from an over-established
way of showing art.
P: One of the things I think you are touching on is
that the Mexicali venue is very authentically what
it is, as opposed to trying to make the statement,
‘we are rebelling against the institution’. Instead, it
is organic and true to itself. I think the artists that
came down and were able to pick up on that and
to engage it were the ones who had the richest experiences.
L: And there’s always the question if this is a
monetary thing, or if there’s a real need for
younger artists to do that sort of thing, to move
away from the establishment. But is well known
that all generations have this phenomenon, that
of trying to move in and out of the idea of the,
‘institutional’. We are even playing with that notion
by using the term, ‘biennial’.
E: The next question is, what happens when
this project goes to another setting and space;
how will it change? Artists who exhibited at La
Casa de la Tia Tina had to deal with how that
space framed up their projects. Tia Tina is not
a “white cube;” it’s raw. For the LA component
of the Biennial we saw first hand how much the
exhibition space can change the context of this
exhibition, just like how adding the word biennial
to an exhibition can change the context of
a show. The intent for both the Mexicali and the
LA events was the same but the outcomes were
very different.
P: Yes, very different results.