MexiCali Biennial
Calafia: Manifesting the terrestrail paradise - the last chapter
January 18 - February 14, 2020
Calafia: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise - The Last Chapter. A group exhibition organized by the MexiCali Biennial.
Opening reception: Tuesday, February 11, 5-8 PM.
Additional programming: a series of screenings, workshops and performances will happen Friday, Jan 17 through Sunday, January 19, 2020 at the U.S.-Mexico border fence and at various locations in Mexicali.
Exhibition runs January 18 – February 14
The word ‘California’ was first written in the sixteenth-century novel Las Sergas de Esplandian (The Adventures of Esplandian) by Castillan author Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo and is regarded by many to be the etymological source of the region’s name. This chivalric romance eroticizes Queen Calafia and her Black Amazon pagan women, who are armed with golden weapons and ride upon mythical beasts, living on a prosperous island called “California”, filled with gold and precious stones. The Eurocentric narrative ultimately ends with the colonization of the land and the subjugation of the queen and her army through marriage and proselytism.
The 2018-2020 MexiCali Biennial reactivates the mythology of Calafia and the island of California through artworks that combine fiction and fact to rethink the extended region that was conceived and intended to be –from a colonial perspective – a “Terrestrial Paradise”.
This particular chapter, the fourth in this exhibition series, features fourteen artists using diverse aesthetic strategies to engage with the consequences of being in a place continuously framed as a “paradise” through a colonial project of erasure and dominance. Artworks reclaim and rewrite the myth of Calafia to deactivate the concept of the ‘paradise’ and show its contradictions, as well as to outline and reimagine the island of California in contemporary times. Futurisms, land poetics, critiques of immigration politics, an analysis of gentrification processes, the myth-making connected to surveillance and militarization, and deconstructions of race and gender are just some of the lines that shape the shore of the island of Calafia.
Artists:
- Jacinto Astiazará
- Amber Bowser
- Chris Christion
- Maya Mackrandilal
- Jane Chang Mi
- Yutsil Cruz
- Mayte Miranda
- Chinwe Okona
- noé olivas
- Monica Rodriguez
- Sandy Rodriguez
- Julio M. Romero
- Paulina Sanchez
- Diane Williams.
CALAFIA: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise is organized by the curatorial team of the MexiCali Biennial: Ed Gomez, Luis G. Hernandez, and Daniela Lieja Quintanar, with coordinator and researcher April Lilard-Gomez.
Event partially sponsored by the Associated Student Council
About the MexiCali Biennial
The MexiCali Biennial is a bi-national arts organization that explores the areas of the California border as a site for aesthetic production. Nomadic exhibitions partner with arts institutions to showcase both emerging and established artists working in all media. Originally started in 2006 as a critique of the proliferation of international and regional biennials, the MexiCali Biennial may occur at any time and on any side of the US-Mexico border.
The extended region in which the MexiCali Biennial has been working includes traditional lands inhabited by Tongva, Tataviam, Chumash, Cahuila, Serrano, Cocopah, Quechan, Kumeyaay, and others. We acknowledge them as part of present, past, and future of this island together with the indigenous groups that have been displaced from their homelands, such as Mixteco, Zapotecs, and Yaqui, who inhabit this land now known as California.
