Ni Chana Ti-Juana

Ni Chana Ti-Juana
Exhibition Dates: November 16 – December 13, 2013
Opening Reception: November 16, 6 – 9pm
Atrium Gallery

RSVP recommended: https://opening16nov2013.eventbrite.com/

‘Ni Chana ni Juana’ is an expression used in Mexico to speak about a condition or situation defined by a lack of resolution: not one or the other, neither here nor there. The exhibition Ni Chana Ti-Juana, opening on November 16 at 18th Street Arts Center, takes this platitude as a conceptual point of departure. Ni Chana Ti-Juana will present work produced during the first-year project in the Otis Graduate Public Practice Program after three trips to Camino Verde, a community in Tijuana B.C.

The projects being presented are at once diverse and similar, individual and collective, each developed in relation to issues, concerns and methodological approaches selected by individual artists, but linked by a shared belief in the ability of small-scale moments of relation to activate a shared human experience that can transcend physical and psychological borders.

The research projects have been facilitated by Bill Kelley Jr. and Cog•nate Collective, with the assistance of Polen Audiovisual and in collaboration with Centro Comunitario Camino Verde, Casa de las Ideas, and community organizers Don Polo, Alma López, and Tico Orozco.

An opening reception for Ni Chana Ti-Juana will be held on November 16 from 6-9pm. The exhibition will be open through December, culminating in a conversation at the Otis Graduate Public Practice studios on December 7 at 12pm.

Artist Bios:

Víctor Albarracín is a former artist, a former writer and a former educator and rock band member. Currently he’s just a student struggling with his language limitations.

Claudia Borgna graduated in fine arts from the London Metropolitan University, UK. She has been attending several fellowship artists’ residencies and exhibiting her work internationally as well as being awarded the Pollock-Krasner Grant and the Royal British Society of Sculptor Award. With special guest Jocelyn Jaime Mejia. Jocelyn is an 18 year old aspiring video maker currently studying Communication Science and living in the Colonia of Camino Verde.

Noé Gaytán is an artist, writer, and curator. His art deals with public space, urbanism, art history, and the idea of art itself. He writes art reviews of contemporary art in Los Angeles on Platinum Cheese. Since 2012 he has been curator of Nomad Art Project.

Tonya Ingram is a New York University alumna, a Cincinnati native, a Bronx-bred introvert and the author of Growl and Snare.  Her poetry has traveled to Ghana, California, Michigan, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., New York, The Literary Bohemian, and Youtube.

Carol Zou is a compulsive collectivizer and guerilla knitter. She co-organizes the public fiber art collective, Yarn Bombing Los Angeles, whose participatory knit projects engage issues of public/private space, women’s work, wish fulfillment, how to exist in an informal capacity vis a vis the institution, and most recently, gentrification.

Mario Mesquita is an advocate, educator, organizer, and artist. His work explores social constructs of relationships between the personal and community sphere. Formally trained in graphic arts at the University of Oregon, his art encompasses the graphical to the situational, the printed to the curated celebrated event. As a native Oregonian and recent transplant to Los Angeles, his most recent challenge has been getting used to the Southern Californian sun.

Estephany Campos is an artist/mentor born and raised in the heart of South Central Los Angeles. Raised under traditional Mexican-American values, her practice consists of staged photography/mixed media intended to capture ideas about women’s trials in life. She graduated from the University of California Riverside with a BA in Studio Art and is now pursuing her MFA in Fine Arts Public Practice at the Otis School of Art and Design. Influenced by her family’s history of community involvement; Campos is interested in bringing art to the masses and raising questions about the art community’s exclusivity.