Tijuana Triennial – Exciting International Art Just Across the Border by Genie Davis
Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT) is beautiful museum and art center, and the home to the 2024-2025 Tijuana Triennial art exhibition. In its second iteration, the International Pictorico features a wide array of stunning installations, paintings, sculptures, and more from 87 artists from 14 international locations.
Cultural promoter and plastics artist Alvara Blancarte, along with Mexico’s Secretariat of Culture, and CECUT itself brought this program into being to both support artistic talent in Mexico and abroad, and to position Tijuana itself as home to a superb exhibition and musuem. The international call to artists focused on conceptualizing artistic possibility that were fresh and creative to rpresent new artistic explorations, dimensions, and techniques, and above all, to challenge traditional ideas of “art.” Over 537 proposals were received, from which the 86 exhibiting artists were carefully culled, representing Mexico, the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, England, Costa Rica, Cuba, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Paraguay, Spain, and Peru.
The artists’ work runs the gamut interms of medium and subject, the latter ranging from artificial intelligence to migration, personal violence, and politcal and social strife. Per the museum’s curatorial statement, the works “contribute to the biological, literary, environmentalist, femicidal, racist, territorial, gender narratives, and more.” Curated and juried by Brazilian critic, writer, and academic Leonor Amarante, the exhibition opened last July and runs through February 2025. Viewers can engage in the exhibition as well, by voting for the works affect them the most. The winning artist receives a prize of 1 million pesos, with additional prizes for the second and third place winners.
Among those exhibiting are returning Miami-based Venezuelan artist Rafael Montilla, this time with his suspended pyramidic sculpture “Door to the Universe.”
Costa Rican artist Karla Herencia, with “What are those stains that float?”, an installation that combines paintings and sculptures shaped from plastic fragments found beaches near Cóbano, Puntarenas, that speaks to the destructive plastic waste disposed of and dispersed in our oceans.
On the politcal and social front, Mexican artist Daniel Ruanova’s “Heraldy for an Emerging Political Society,” and Yumnia Duarte (Mexico)’s “We Can’t Hold Back the Water,” also shine.
There are fabric based works including a haunting familial circle that depict ephmeral hanging dresses; a vast “room” shaped from diaphonous fabric panels of larger-than-life female figures enduring often frightening changes in “Volatile intimacy: tales from a nomadic body-house that manages to cross legal and inhuman boundaries,” a powerful piece by Venezuelan artist Sofia Saavedra.
There are light and sound works, from Argentinian/Brazilian artist TEC with his projected floor work depicting the moving outline of a body and cars in a parking lot, “Asphalt in Motion,” and the wonderfully interactive – visitors may write on a shard of pottery – black light installation replete with “flying carpet” and a celestial-appearing black urn, “Take Off Terminal” from EcoPola Art (Mexico.)
There’s a sculptural work consisting of trash found along the Tijuana border crossing with the U.S.; a black-lit room illuminating glowing paintings of men with large bottles of water; and a magenta and hot pink shiny room, which when crossed – wearing paper booties to protect the floor’s surface – reveals a soft furry magenta room, and a video depicting a wounded man.
In another space there stands a vast army of headless female maniquins clad in diaphonous skirts with vests made of leaves, on which are painted a series of faces.
The work was created by XoQue, an art group that invites viewers to “walk among the pinata dress-form to highlight the injustices occuring on the the female body where many are violantly assaulted in public spaces. Here we can reflect on how a united community can create healing change in third spaces. Which body form speaks to you?”
From a large sculptural abacus to lush fiber art that moves in multi-colored waves across a surface and Pablo Castaneda’s “The Sentinel,” spray paint on found objects, there are so many fascinating, meaningful works to view, roadmaps, as it were, to the human condition.
Among these many stellar works are an astonishing collage and series of delicate, haunting mosaic tower scultpures made of ceramic shards from Peggy Sivert (Portugese Bend Projects) “The Past Presents.” Sivert layers ceramic fragments around a central iron armature, and a concrete mastic, giving a fresh new life to castoff ceramics.
Also singularly imperssive is a large-scale, layered, and richly evocative acrylic painting from Sierra Madre-based artist Eva Malhorta, who quite literally carves into her painted works, here, the lushly intricate work, “Call to the Sacred.” Malhorta works in encaustic and carved work, oil and acrylic painting, installations, performance, and photography. The work is glowing, an intimately connected network of lines and shapes, intricate and mysterious.
Both Sivert and Malhorta are tremendously accomplished artists, whose versality and range have led to countless LA-area and international exhibitions. While completely different concepturally, both artists’ works were among the most beautiful and powerful in the vast exhibition. It’s not easy to be standouts in a collection of standouts, but these two Los Angeles artists have more than managed it.
In all, exhibiting artists include:
Alba Esperanzaaa
Alexander V Molina
Alfredo Gallegos Mena
Alicia In Spiral
Alvaro Fernandez Melchor
Ana Karen Rodriguez Sanchez
Angelica Escoto
Anirakconk
Architectural Artist Alvaro Alvarez
Armand
Azucena Leticia Gomez Rodriguez
Becky Guttin
Braulio Adrian Huerta Ortiz
Camilo Bojaca Ardila
Candor Chavez
Carolina Villanueva Lucero
Celeste Flores
Cesar Meneghetti
Christian Becerra
Claudia Casarino
Coletivo Duas Marias
Constanza Fregoso
Dalia Ortega
Daniel Ruanova
David Bucio
Julie Hermoso
Jupiterfab
Karla Herencia
Kubemanart
Leka Mendes
Leonor Hochschild
Luis Aduna
Luis Fitch
Maik Jimenez
Marcela Roldan De Luna
Marcio Almeida
Maria Belen Robeda
Maria Gloria Nieto Montero
Maria Orozco
Marila Dardot
Maru Ulivi
Mila Gross
Monica Aceves
Nereida Dusten
Omar Castillo
Oscar Ratto
Oslyn Whizar Toscano
Othon Castaneda
Pablo Castaneda
Patricia Henriquez
Patricie Gerber
David Eduardo Santillan Caicedo
Diana Olarte
Ecopola Art
Caradura Editions
Elena Parau
Emmanuel Bornstein
Enrique Rubio
Esmeralda Torres
Eva Malhotra
Evangelista
Fabiana Wolf
Felipe Coaquira Charca
Franco Mendéz Calvillo
Gabriela González Leal
Geoneide Brandão
Gerardo Mendez
German Betancur
Groom
Guadalupe Reyes
Gustavo Dalinha
Hector Zamora
Ivan Martinez
Jonathan Vasquez
Jorge A Palos
Jose Patricio
Peggy Sivert
R. Trompaz
Rafael Perea De La Cabada
Regina Silveira
Renato Pera
Rene Gomez Ome
Ricardo Pinto
Ricardo Van Steen
Rocco Almanza
Saldaña
Salgado
Samara Colina
Scott Henry Hopkins
Shuta Ruelas
Sofia Saavedra
Solis Apollon
Stephania Bueno
Suzanna Gonzalez-Revillo
Tec
Ttzarzar
Tufo
Xoque Art In Motion
Yuan Gong
Yumnia Duarte
Zaka
Do cross the border this month and experience this involving and lovely exhibition. The museum offers easy parking; if you prefer to park on the Chula Vista U.S. side, you can cross the border on foot and take a five minute cab ride to the museum for a few dollars. CECUT is open 10-7, Tuesday-Sunday. The address is: P.º de los Héroes 9350, Zona Urbana Rio Tijuana
Tijuana, B.C., Mexico, CA
- Genie Davis; photos, Genie Davis