The Outsiders from the Other Side is an exhibition by nine artists that proposes, based on an open theme, to show a little of the artistic production in Tijuana. The border between the United States and Tijuana is culturally linked, yet when we – on the Mexican side – cross through, it is called “going to the other side,” as if moving through the border is moving into another dimension. The U.S. is only a few hours away, but many aspects of experience and culture are strikingly distinct.

Even so, we see the United States as a colony or a neighborhood – at once part of our city and at the same time another dimension. This is how we have grown up since we were little: going to the San Diego Zoo and Disneyland on school trips, visiting the galleries of Balboa Park, seeing the murals of Chicano art from the Logan neighborhood, or coming here to Los Angeles to buy clothes and items in the alleys near Track 16 to then resell in our city. These experiences have turned us into cross-border beings, which has influenced our artistic work, making it very different from the rest of Mexico. We take the best or the worst of both cultures and reflect it in our work.

About the artists

Acamonchi arrived at a way of looking. Many make images, but few achieve do them from an unusual perspective and produce a work, that is, that contradiction consisting of making a coherent series of exceptions.

Those of us who are not artists sometimes look through artists. They allow us to reform our vision, knowing his work is a re-education of perception. Few They are the true visual artists. But we can all enjoy it.

I would say that Acamonchi is one of those few artists. But Acamonchi has several. The artist of mail and the Internet, of the fanzine and the hand-out, of the networks and the archive, of the tracing and the stencil, the painter and the graffiti artist, the designer, and the urban user. Acamonchi's work can be used to briefly review many of the innovative currents in art of recent decades. That's extraordinary.

Many of us can already look through Acamonchi. Sometimes, for example, I can't look at a car, a bicycle, Rafa Saavedra's face, Colosio or Raúl Velasco without Acamonchi. There are colors and juxtapositions that I inevitably see through Acamonchi, who is no longer only (there) in his works but (here) inside the retina.

It is also extraordinary that Acamonchi has managed to navigate so many spheres of aesthetic experimentation without losing its congruence: linking your art to an alternative mode of life, simultaneously scratchier and kinder. His work combines charm and criticism; enjoyment and experimentation; edge & fun; and punk and pop. Acamonchi is a borderizo. But not only from two countries.

Acamonchi's works are not loose. Its diversity is surprising but there is a unit. Discovering that unity is up to us. Acamonchi already gave us the key: he already gave us his way of looking.

Stimulate the eyes. The gift of being in others.

(Written by Heriberto Yépez (2014))

Dada has a Bachelor's degree in graphic design specializing in visual arts from Universidad Iberoamericana Tijuana. Visual artists from the Tijuana/San Diego region have been influenced by pop culture and subcultures like skateboarding and graffiti, as well as music, painting, photography, and graphic arts from this region. His work is characterized by using “stencil” and other techniques such as silkscreen and Lino prints to produce his artwork ranging from paintings, prints, murals, and installation art.

He has participated in multidisciplinary projects in the visual arts where interventions have distinguished his work in the public space and through workshops given to the community on both sides of the border. Creativity has taken him to work as a scholar at the “Instituto de Cultura de Baja California” and Conaculta “Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y lasArtes” leading him to work on different projects and art shows both in Tijuana and San Diego.

He is a member of the “Mexican stencil Community” ( Comunidad estencil México) and he is one of the artists participating in the creation of Puentes, a national archive of stencil artwork. He continues painting, teaching, and producing art synthesizing the visual influences from his environment creating a very peculiar style in which he shows his vision of cross/ border culture mixed with graffiti and pop culture from the region.

Brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre were born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1964, 1960. In a sudden family move, the brothers moved to Dana Point, California in 1972. They both attended Long Beach State University, Jamex, and received BFAs in Sculpture in 1983. Currently, the brothers live and work on both sides of the border: The Guadalupe Valley in Baja California and San Diego. The complexities of the emigration experience, with its ensuing biculturalism, as well as their life on both sides of the border, explain a great deal of where their work comes from.

The brothers have been collaborating in earnest since the mid-nineties; they have developed their signature style of mixed media work with blown glass sculpture, installation art, as well as public art. Their pieces represent a multifaceted view of life that reflects a complex and humorous aesthetic that could be called baroque. Their approach is additive, constantly layering material, and meaning. Their influences range from Catholic iconography to German expressionism while also paying homage to Mexican vernacular arts and pre-Columbian art. In recent years, they have been experimenting with lenticular printing and creating photomural installations. They have won the USA Artists Fellowship Award, the San Diego Foundation Grant Award, The San Diego Art Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. They have had 16 solo museum exhibitions including several in Europe. Recently they’ve had a major retrospective at the Cheech Museum, a solo exhibition in Portugal, and a major new project in Mexico City.

Damariz Aispuro - Tijuana 1984, self-taught creator – her approach to the arts began in her adolescence, starting with graffiti, technical, industrial, and architectural drawing. Always tries as a creator to be an outsider, defining herself as a “dispersist”. She officially began her artistic curriculum in 2009, in the city of Tijuana and the United States, participating in several collective exhibitions and two individual ones. Mainly, her works lean towards urbanism, chaos, anarchy, sexuality, and mysticism. Being born and raised in the city of Tijuana has allowed her to experience each of these issues up close.

Many times, the inspiration comes to her thanks to the decadence and surrealism of her city. She was a teacher for 11 years in different areas and institutions, all regarding art. She is currently dedicated to creating full-time, has collaborated in the illustration of an unpublished book, and collaborated in another recently published book P. Neuma with the Catalan poet Xavier Giol. She is currently exploring different areas, such as: painting, engraving, drawing, collage, photography, and ceramics. Aispuro is located between the United States, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, and Cuba.

Mariel Miranda is a multi-disciplinary Mexican artist. She received an MFA in Studio Art with an Emphasis on Photography, Video, and Imaging from the University of Arizona. Recent honors include the National System of Art Creators grant (2023-2026), Gary Metz Research Fellowship (2023), Border Lab Graduate Fellowship (2022); Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize (2021), Mellon-Fronteridades Grad FellowshipAward (2021) and The University of Arizona Fellows Award 2020 (offered to the University’s highest-ranked incoming graduate students).

Toni Larios was born and raised in downtown Tijuana.

All my life I grew up watching the happenings of the city, getting to know the wide range of people that circulate such a diverse and agitated place like this with people coming and going from all over the country and the world due to its location right by the border they want to cross creating a phenomenon very particular to a city like this, allowing me to a turmoil of stories and characters at first hand that I now hide in my pieces. These stories make the city what it is and, in part, I became an artist telling those stories because of growing up here.

Astrology was my childhood dream but life had another plan, I was curious for astrology because I was an observer at heart, I wanted to discover and learn what lied beyond what I could see but I was a natural artist. I have no academic formation for arts and I had no intention of pursuing a career in something that was for me simply an activity to pass the time and unwind. This therapeutic effect that art had on me was what led me into where I am right now, after a troubled derailment of my life during my teenage years, I started to use art as an escape to speak my mind and explores the things going on inside me. Seeing art in a new light made me attempt my first tries as a more professional creator in 2008 submitting my work to participate in the “Entijuanarte” festival.

Getting involved in several local art shows and festivals led me to be a part of the project to rehabilitate Pasaje Rodriguez back in 2010. Amongst some notable events, I’ve had two honorable mentions at “La Bienal de Baja California” both in 2013, 2015.

  • Faces, Disclosed unLocation gallery. San Diego CAL. 2013
  • Fantasmas, Low Gallery. San Diego CAL. 2014 A collective art show
  • Línea Actual, Arte Joven de la Frontera Norte, 50 Avenue Gallery. Los Ángeles Cal. 2013
  • Periférica. Seleccionado de Baja California, Salón Acme. CDMX 2018
  • Occvlt Gallery, Logan Av. Studio San Diego CAL. 2021.

(By Toni Larios)

Alejandro Zacarías was born in Guadalajara Jalisco and has lived in Tijuana since 1970, where he has developed his work. He is a visual artist who since the beginning of the 90s has participated in and organized events, exhibitions, and multidisciplinary art festivals. Painting, installation, performance, video, photography, and art object works for which he is considered one of the protagonists of the emergence of art contemporary border in Tijuana. His work is based on assemblage.

He has worked with techniques ranging from painting, recycling, intervention, and installation of public space and private. His work has been part of more than forty exhibitions, biennials or group shows in Tijuana and other cities in Mexico and the United States such as the Centro Cultural Tijuana, The Rufino Tamayo Museum, and the Tijuana-San Diego InSite Site-Specific Festival 97. He’s had a dozen individual exhibitions. On multiple occasions from the Institute of Culture of Baja California he has been awarded the Scholarship for Creators with Trajectory.

“Alejandro Zacarías is part of the handful of artists who are identified as representatives of urban aesthetics on the Mexico-United States border,” says writer and poetic Heriberto Yépez.

Alfredo Libre Gutiérrez (1982) born in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, is an architect and plastic artist. He began his artistic career within the world of graffiti on the streets of his hometown. His studio practice combines traditional techniques with alternative approaches to create artworks where order and chaos are evident, resulting in a work where entropy is manifested at the discretion of the guest with whom he shares space, moments, and situations.

In addition to carrying out personal artistic projects, he gives various workshops on urban art, drawing, painting, sculpture and composition, commercial projects, and great social work which involves the community (mainly young people), always from an artistic approach. He has worked with different institutions such as the Institute of Culture of Baja California, IMAC (Municipal Institute of Art and Culture in Tijuana), Ceart, Mayor's Office of Los Angeles, Institute of Cultural Affairs, Infonavit, Mamutt Creatividad, Ocesa, SUPRA, Arto, SER, La Mesa Penitentiary, National Penitentiary System, Contemporary Art Platform, Hogares Foundation, Alas y Raíces Foundation, Amnesty International, UNESCO, German Embassy, ORB Foundation, Historic Center Trust, Injuve DF, Urban Services, Cuauhtémoc Delegation Mexico City, Mexican Embassy in Greece, and Athens School of Arts.

He has been involved in urban art projects and gallery exhibitions in locations in Mexico (such as Tijuana, Rosarito, Ensenada, León, Guadalajara, Quintana Roo, La Paz, Acapulco, Toluca and Mexico City); abroad in 26 countries and various cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Cuba, Colombia, Paris, Frankfurt, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, London, Peru, Paraguay, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Canada, Greece and South Africa).