Chantal Peñalosa

I grew up within an invisible story. What is border art? Something I did not get to witness, but I was told happened. Border art is a ghost I would like to know, and that must be invoked.

It is an unresolved issue not only for me, but also for the history of art in Mexico and North America.

When I call it, border art begins to appear in fragments, in quotations, details that are composed as a set that has the shape and life of a garage.

The exhibition consists of three moments:

1) A photographic series about an invisible exhibition I did in Tijuana, between the San Diego and Popotla area, where I installed photographs of events that occurred between 1994 and 2005, and that became key pieces of border art.

2) A review (on going) of works by artists who have worked around the border from the 1970’s until the present. Some of these works are emblematic, others are less known. I remade fragments, details, parts of those works of border art, as a fictional garage where they accumulate, intersect, revive.

3) The border is an environment. The Unfinished Business Garage space will expose visitors to aromas made with air components from the border crossing area between Tijuana and San Diego. Border art is also an experience of smell.

Beyond a chronological sense, in Unfinished Business Garage I suggest a review to form an aesthetic memory of those shapes worked from the border.

— Chantal Peñalosa