Sunday, January 14, 2007

Artists From The Border

The Santa Monica Museum of Art's new show Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana, "is the first major traveling exhibition to explore and celebrate the vibrant interdisciplinary art scene in Tijuana, Mexico, one of the world’s leading crucibles of cultural innovation. [The featured artists'] bold, cutting-edge work embodies the powerful creative energy of a city transformed by crosscurrents of globalization, media, and issues of migration and identity." [more]
The exhibit opens with the stunning, wall-size work of Mexican American brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre. Titled Exporting Democracy, the mixed media installation represents a map of the world, at the center of which is an oversize 3D map of America, with at its own center what looks like a Madonna but is in fact a vulva from which butterflies escape and whirlwind on the museum's ceiling, some of them turning into fighter jets. A mouthful to describe [no pix allowed in the museum] but definitely worth the visit. [related]
[edit: Nuevo Cool in LAWeekly 01/26]
modified illustration Google Images: same installation - different locale