BSH: Tijuana is in a totally different place and time compared to Mexico City. In Mexico City you have young artists, but you also have older artists who have quite a lot of experience. In Tijuana most of the artists that people seem to be becoming aware of are under 30. The artists that I knew of when I first arrived here are now almost the older generation, even though some of them are only 28. In contrast to Mexico City most of the artists in TJ are self-taught. There is no art school. There are no art critics. There are no commercial galleries. There is the audience apart from the artists themselves. TJ has become a kind of experimental laboratory based on a very strong social support network. This is something that we also see in Mexico City, although on a much grander, much more developed scale. I think we can account, in part, for the critical mass of interesting work being done in Mexico City on the very intense social network and the very close dialogue amongst artists, art critics, curators, gallery directors, which has formed an atmosphere of contagious ambition and collective activity.

I recognize that TJ is a burgeoning situation because, at least to my eye, growth in the last two years, in terms of the number of artists working, is expediential. But, we donít entirely know yet what TJ is becoming, and because resources are so scant there, it is very much a do-it-yourself situation. This is changing slightly, but I think that in order for Tijuana to really go beyond this embryonic stage resources need to be put into place so that different forces can begin to shape this community beyond self–initiative.

DC: Axis Mexico includes the work of Mexican artists who reside in US cities and non-Mexican artists who have made Mexico City their home. Something about Mexico ties them together, but evidently neither shared geography, nor place of birth. Could you talk a little about this intersection between the national context of Mexico and the international post border artist?

BSH: What is interesting in contemporary Mexican art is the desire on the part of young artists to become part of the international art scene, whilst at the same time wanting to be part of Mexico, or have Mexico be part of them.

Mexico has a very strong cultural identity, and I think there is a sense in which artists want to remain connected to that. Obviously, there are a lot of different positions regarding to what extent, and in what way this sense of embodiment of place manifests itself. However, artists also want to be able to create in as large a sphere, in terms of who recognizes them, as possible. If you come from a third world country, or a second world country, you almost have to look for audiences, collectors, etc. outside, because the resources within your country are much narrower than the United States for example. This is something that Eduardo Abaroa talks about: in order to stretch and breath, and feel that you can speak on the level that you want to speak as an artist, you almost have to leave.

On the other hand, there is also a lot of freedom when working in Mexico rather than in a first world country. There are a lot of inhibitions here in the US for example; a different kind of censorship that you come up against. I think that in some ways Latin America has always been much more tolerant of representations of disaster and death and certain types of sexuality, and has been more sensitive to religious imagery.