DESIERTO.ARTE.ARCHIVO

In the desert, on the border, we are all in peril. Our terrain is flat and so is our ontology; flora, fauna, human beings, minerals, and even dreams are all precariously tethered to a river that seldom carries water and mostly serves as a stark reminder that there is no such thing as a free ride when the first and the third worlds collide. Our land is cheap, and so we sprawl across the sand like garter snakes digging up refuge, belly flat on the ground like a family of four that just heard gunshots across the street. Our relationship with our landscape is suspect at best, we know it is not meant to sustain us for long, yet we keep devising methods to extract capital from shifting dunes. We even dare extract poetry and pigments and aesthetic bemusement and acute contemplation; all to once again claim this desert as our own; all to once again claim ourselves as the desert’s own.”
—Dr. León De la Rosa-Carrillo, Art Department, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez

Project Coordinators:
Art Department,
Universidád de Ciudad Juárez:
Gracia Chavez-Ortiz
Dr. León De la Rosa-Carrillo
Dr. Ma. Eugenia Hernández-Sánchez 

Participants:
Cassandra Adame
Alejandra Aragón
Alba Naiky Arreola-Cepeda
Alejandra Carrillo-Estrada
Octavio Castrejón
Enrique Casaña-Díaz
Paloma Galavíz,
Pilar García
René López,
Martín Luna
Andréa Magallanes
Laura Meneses
Paola Nayely Mendoza
Abril Meléndez
América Pérez
César Ponce
Ángel Rangel
Juancarlos Reyes
Alexandra Rodríguez
Marcia I. Santos
Julian West


Guest Lecturers:
Janette Terrazas Islas, independent artist
Dr. Pablo Levin, Biochemistry Sciences, UACJ
Dr. Cynthia Bejarano, NMSU

 

Desierto.Arte.Archivo

November 9, 2019 – January 24, 2020
Centro Cultural de las Fronteras UACJ

Presented by the Visual Arts Program at Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez in collaboration with El Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez

The exhibition Desierto.Arte.Archivo is the result of a series of individual and collective arts-based inquiries into the aesthetic, biological and political nodes that have shaped our desert into its current form. Participating artists walked the desert’s terrain, documented it as a place, engaged it as a learning site, and searched for insights and souvenirs as they mapped their commitment to a horizontal life where all desert dwellers (mineral, biological and cultural) commingle and inform each other.

Banner Image: Marcia I. SantosAffective Cartography, 2019, Paint on wall– a collective schematic from the project Desierto.Arte.Archivo at Universidád de Ciudad Juárez.
Desierto.Arte.ArchivoInstallation View, 2019, photo courtesy of laura c carlson
Juancarlos Reyes, Laura Meneses, & Paola Espinoza, El Muro, 2019, photo courtesy of laura c carlson.
Gracia Emelia Chavez, La migración es parte del aroma que respiras aquí, 2019, photo courtesy of León de la Rosa
Abril Melendez de León, Tierráticas, 2019. Photo courtesy of León de la Rosa