Guillermo Estrada a.k.a. Rancho Shampoo, Aliendigenismo, 2022. Digital photo collage. Produced in collaboration with Rubén Alonso Tamayo. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Héctor Gálvez

PARA/normal Borders is a cross-border curatorial initiative developed by the MexiCali Biennial, an artist-run, nomadic organization with hubs in Whittier and Calexico, California, and at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture (The Cheech) of the Riverside Art Museum. Edward Gomez and Luis G. Hernandez founded the MexiCali Biennial in 2006 as a way to critique the traditional biennial format and subvert convention by remaining nomadic in both time and place. The Cheech is led by María Esther Fernández. 

The project explores the borderlands between California and Mexico as a “thin place,” a concept used by the curators to describe a zone where the boundary between worlds is porous and ancestral presence is palpable. Participating artists, selected through a hybrid invitation and open call process, include multidisciplinary artist and therapist Edgar Fabián Frías of Los Angeles; Chantal Peñalosa Fong, born in Tecate and based in Tijuana; sound artist Adrián Pereda Vidal of Mexicali; and Rubén Ortiz Torres, born in Mexico City and now based in Los Angeles. Projects include sci-fi-inspired sculptural environments that imagine alternate futures shaped by alien contact and border politics; neon and mirrored installations that reframe migration through speculative cosmologies; and esoteric works incorporating tarot symbolism, crystal-based sculptures, ancestral storytelling, and sound to explore inherited memory, intergenerational grief, and spiritual resistance.

Exhibitions and events will take place at partner venues including Planta Libre, an experimental gallery in downtown Mexicali, Mexico; Steppling Gallery at San Diego State University Imperial Valley in Calexico; and Casa la Línea Arte Contemporáneo, an artist-run space in Calexico located near the border. These exhibitions and accompanying programs will culminate in a final presentation at The Cheech in February 2027.

Talia Perez Gilbert, “¿Quién tocó la puerta de la nave del astronauta?,” 2024. 3D printed sculpture. Courtesy the artist

Ed Gomez is an artist, educator, curator, and cofounder of the MexiCali Biennial. Based in Los Angeles and San Bernardino, he has co-curated transnational, artist-centered exhibitions since the Biennial’s founding in 2006. He co-directs the MXCL BNL LAB, the Biennial’s new research and exhibition space, and hosts the PARA/normal Borders podcast. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, including at HilbertRaum (Berlin), Galeri MOD (Istanbul), and Centro Cultural Paso del Norte (Ciudad Juárez). He is coeditor of MexiCali Biennial: Art, Actions, and Exchanges Since 2006, a forthcoming publication marking the project’s twenty-year history. Gomez is a Professor of Art and Design at California State University, San Bernardino. He holds a BFA from Arizona State University and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.

Luis G. Hernandez is an artist, educator, curator, and cofounder of the MexiCali Biennial. He lives and works between Mexicali and Calexico. Since 2006, he has co-curated the Biennial; he now also operates Arista 1701 (Mexicali) and Casa la línea (Calexico), two art spaces central to the project’s programming. Solo exhibitions of his work have taken place at i21 and Tres Ojos (Mexicali) and Artere-a (Guadalajara). Group shows include Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Ex Teresa Arte Actual (Mexico City), the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and the Kunstverein München (Munich). He teaches at San Diego State University, Imperial Valley, where he also directs the Steppling Gallery, a key venue for MexiCali Biennial exhibitions. Hernandez holds a BFA from California State University, Long Beach, and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.

María Esther Fernández is the inaugural Artistic Director of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum. Formerly Chief Curator and Deputy Director at the Triton Museum of Art (Santa Clara), she has curated numerous exhibitions, including Xicana: Spiritual Reflections (2010), Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Welcome to Flower-Landia (2013), and Judithe Hernández: Beyond Myself, Somewhere, I Wait for My Arrival (2024). She co-curated Xicanx Futurity (2016) and the major retrospective Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory (2023). Fernández holds a BA in Chicana/o and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

elizabet elliot, Allison Schaub, Micah Mermilliod, Garrett Grimes Timme, Alabama Contemporary Art Center (ACAC)