MinerAlert
MinerAlert
 |
The Rubin Center is pleased to announce the artists who have been selected for exhibitions in the 2024-2025 Genius Loci series. Selected by a jury of two internationally-known arts professionals and one member of the Rubin Center team, the exhibitions are generously supported by a Mellon Foundation grant. Please join us in congratulating Marcus Chormicle (Las Cruces, NM), Un Dique (Octavio Castrejón and Alonso Robles, Ciudad Juárez), and Cynthia Gutierrez-Krapp (El Paso).
The Genius Loci series was developed to begin to purposefully exhibit artwork by regional artists in the Rubin Center Project Space, offering a select group of artists the opportunity to develop exhibition proposals in collaboration with Rubin Center curators. Previous exhibitions in the series were curated by Rubin Center Curator Laura Augusta and included Laura Turón: Immersive Abstractions and Christin Apodaca: Proving the Hypothesis of Celestial Flirtation.
The Rubin Center staff developed the Genius Loci open call to share work by local artists with invited guest curators from outside of the region and to provide a broader perspective on our emerging work with local artists. Our goals for the project included sharing work by local and regional artists with a national/international arts network, to benefit not only the selected artists but all participating artists whose work would be reviewed and discussed by our invited jurors. The inaugural proposals were juried by Tanya Aguiñiga and Andrés Payán Estrada, with participation by Ramon Cardenas, Assistant Curator of Practice representing the Rubin Center curatorial team. You can read more about the jurors by following the links to their bios and juror statements below.
In our first year (2023-24) we opened the call to all visual artists living and working within a 100 mile radius of El Paso, with the exception of currently enrolled students. We received 19 proposals from artists and collectives ranging from Las Cruces to Ciudad Juarez. They included UTEP faculty artists, recent graduates from regional arts programs, self-taught artists and artist with MFA’s from programs around the country. Our three jurors independently reviewed and ranked all 19 proposals, rating them in the following four categories:
After all 19 proposals were ranked individually by the three participating jurors, each juror was invited to bring their top four proposals for discussion. The winning three proposals were selected by consensus from the three jurors and will have exhibitions in the Rubin Center Project Space over the 2024 calendar year.
It is our intention to open a second Call for Artists towards the end of 2024, in an effort to seek out new proposals that would not otherwise come to the attention of Rubin Center curators, and to broaden the regional, national and international network of local artists.
|
|
Marcus Chormicle
Is a lens-based artist whose work focuses on family, memory, and the intersections of class, race, and history in the U.S. Southwest. His work Still Playing with Fire offers a multigenerational reflection on the violence of Southern New Mexico and its impact on the people living there today. In Say Uncle, he celebrates heritage and family, while following his uncles through the canyons of their ancestral homeland on the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation. Chormicle recently closed the Cristian Anthony Vallejo Memorial Gallery in Las Cruces, an art space dedicated to his late cousin, who passed away in 2020. During the two years the gallery was in operation, he organized 15 exhibitions of primarily Indigenous and Latinx arists, through artistic reflections on generational cycles, issues of migration, spirituality, and Indigenous expressions of place. He recently completed a residency at Light Work in Syracuse, New York. |
 |
Un Dique: Octavio Castrejón and Alonso Robles
(Ciudad Juárez) @un.dique
Un Dique is an independent curatorial project that considers the urgency of creating artistic spaces in the border zones of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, with the objective of sharing and expanding these practices into public spaces. Octavio Castrejón completed a degree in Art Theory and Criticism at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez. He has worked as an organizer in numerous local and international exhibition and research projects. Alonso Robles completed his degree in visual art at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez; in 2020-2021, he was supported by the program Jóvenes Creadores del FONCA. His work has been shown in numerous individual and group exhibitions in Juárez, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. His paintings describe an aesthetic of the border experience from the relationships between informal commerce, native ecologies, and the landscapes of the desert.
|
 |
Cynthia Gutierrez-Krapp
is a mixed-media textile artist whose installation and object-based work pairs natural figures with glass and handmade clay beads. For the past decade, Gutierrez-Krapp has been recuperating her Indigenous past: exploring her family’s Diné/Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and Yaqui heritage. She writes, “Generations of my maternal side, including my mother, grew up on reservations/encampments in and around El Paso; my grandmother was a Native language speaker and did not speak English or Spanish. Yet I did not learn about any of this history until I was around forty years old. My mother has a very hard time talking with me about our past, her trauma seems to silence her, even now, but learning about who we are has not silenced me, rather it has become the motivating force behind my work and life.”
|
After reviewing the proposals, juror Tanya Aguiñiga, a renowned artist and craftsperson based in San Diego / Tijuana, writes:
"As an artist actively working on issues facing the borderlands, judging The Rubin Center's Genius Loci Exhibition was not only an honor, but an opportunity to familiarize myself with the current issues artists are concerned with in the Juárez/ El Paso region. The works submitted were incredibly diverse and evocative, reflecting pressing issues faced by multiple marginalized communities right now. In selecting the awardees, I looked for artists that represented varied viewpoints in material, subject matter, collaborations, and locale, as well as what the opportunity would mean at this time of the artists' career. The vulnerability, range and quality of works submitted made it difficult to select only three artists. It was a true pleasure to get to know the work of artists who applied, and a gift to get to learn more about the work being made at and about a border region different from my own in San Diego/Tijuana. Thanks to everyone who submitted for sharing your work with us, I wish you all the best."
Ramon Cardenas, Assistant Curator of Practice at the Rubin Center, also joined the jurors to review applications. Ramon will be organizing the Genius Loci exhibitions, working closely with the artists to develop and produce their proposed projects. He writes:
"I am excited to work with this year’s Genius Loci artists to assist in realizing their ambitious visions. It was a challenge to choose three exhibitions from this competitive group of 19 diverse proposals. Deliberating with my fellow panelists gave perspective and expertise from artists and curators from outside the region… What stood out to me were proposals with ideas to transform and expand the space, contribute to historical research, and innovative artistic practices in our Border Region. These proposals align with the Rubin Centers mission of artist-led and community-centered explorations of the Border. Thank you to all the artists that took the time to submit to this year's Genius Loci open call for exhibition proposals. It was an honor to get to know your work."
The third juror was Andrés Payan, an artist and arts professional based in Los Angeles. He writes:
"As someone who was born in Ciudad Juárez who started his professional arts administration career in El Paso, Texas, it was truly an honor to be selected to jury the inaugural round of Genius Loci Award. Jury processes can always be challenging, and one must always acknowledge the work and care that every single applicant has put into sharing their work. It was moving to see all the incredible work and diverse voices that make up our border community.
Congratulations to the three awardees, Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Cynthia Gutierrez-Krapp, and Un Dique; together they represent but a snapshot of our thriving communities. From reclaimed stories of trauma and pain that empower unheard voices through beautiful images, the process of finding oneself through handmade objects that reconnect us to our ancestors, to hearkening critiques on the systems of value and infrastructure’s that attempt to predicate the spaces that we inhabit as artists and individuals. We hope that this initial cohort serves as a foundation that continues to uplift the practices and voices of artistic communities in the border region."
