ART REVIEW : BORDER REALITIES COMING ALIVE

The Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park is doing it again: presenting some of the most energetic art to be seen in San Diego.

It has passion as well as intelligence and poetry--and whatever else you might want from art.

It also is engaged with life--unabashedly so. It has a political and social program: enlightenment over the artificiality of the San Diego-Tijuana border and the reality of a bilingual, mixed culture that thrives there.

The exhibition, “Border Realities III,” is the third in an annual series presented by the Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo, a group of artists concerned about the border.

“The works demonstrate that the border is a game in which we play our stereotypical roles too well,” said spokesman David Avalos.

“It looks the same from both sides. Although you set out to cross the border from one side to the other side, you end up on the same side.

“There really is no such thing as a border. It’s an illusion. But borders do exist in the hearts and minds of people.”

The exhibition is a group of juxtaposed and overlapping installations that represent the simultaneity of life’s experiences. You can see several at one time and, even as you focus on one, you are aware of others. It’s a demanding exhibition, but on balance a visit is more stimulating than exhausting.

A major focus is documentation of a site-specific performance-installation created Oct. 12, Columbus Day/Dia de la Raza, where Tijuana and San Diego meet the Pacific Ocean. Titled “End of the Line,” its purpose was to raise questions about a sense of place, to challenge the media concept of the border as a “war zone” and to reexamine the idea of the discovery of America.

Items from the Oct. 12 performance, which was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts through Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, include large, ingenious costume structures, or body forms. An immense pair of binoculars with bloodshot lenses represents “La Migra,” or the U.S. Border Patrol. A cactus plant is “El Nopal,” a humble Mexican native. A huge combat boot represents “El Marine.” Photographs, objects and texts accompanying the structures give some sense of the event.

Among the most successful related works are Victor Ochoa’s “Loteria Cards.” Each one is a large photo-image of a drawing by the artist of the “End of the Line” performers in costume. The works are dazzling, with Ochoa’s high-key colors painted, sprayed and spattered on the images. Additional body forms include “La Criada,” or maid, whose torso is a bottle of bleach, and “La Turista,” whose torso is a camera. Two other images are “El Surf” and “La Punk.”

Sara-Jo Berman has made a “Mate Check” altar whose structure is part of an upended rowboat (perhaps 15 feet high) named “SS Americas.” Connected to it by immense fish hooks at the ends of long lengths of red ribbon are chess pawns dressed in parts of wedding-party costumes. Inside the altar is a diptych: maps of South and North America, illuminated by flickering votive candles. Where you expect to see a crucifix or a statue of the Virgin Mary, you find a small robot. Finally, three horizontal mirrors below the maps eerily segment the viewer’s reflection. The work is a moving and somewhat chilling commentary about a lack of union.

Among several pieces by Michael Schnorr, “Border Crossing” is the most successful because it is the most readily accessible and visually exciting. Its subtitle, “The Road to Hell,” appears in a photograph of a sign that a religious sect during the 1920s painted on National Avenue near 13th Street with an arrow pointing toward Tijuana. Schnorr’s mural, consisting of a field of “US Ammo” boxes, a “broken” painting of the border (or a painting of a broken border) viewed from the Mexican side, and an illuminated sign, HELL, makes the point that “Hell” depends on your perspective.

Among the other works is Avalos’ huge “Border Fence as Moebius Strip” made of cyclone fencing twisted 180 degrees so that it has only one side. The artist’s texts read: “You try to cross the border but never reach the other side” and “You cross the fence then realize you’re still on the same side.”

Beyond the fence is Avalos’ graphically powerful mural with texts, “The Border Is an International Fiction.”

Other works include Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Emily Hicks’ text and photo-mural installation titled “The Border Is Fashionable,” and murals by Robert Sanchez and Gerardo Navarro.

Tijuana artist Marco Vinicio Gonzalez’s photo-and-text installation regarding this nation’s international actions and scandals during the last few years remind us that it is instructive to see ourselves as others see us.

The exhibition continues through March 22.