The first major traveling exhibition to explore and celebrate the vibrant interdisciplinary art scene in Tijuana, México, one of the world’s leading crucibles of cultural innovation

Over the past decade, a seismic shift in economic and political forces has transformed life in the second-largest city on the West Coast, situated at the most heavily trafficked international border crossing in the world. Tijuana's newfound wealth and haphazard expansion have changed patterns of migration for the city's many artists, who once routinely moved north to Los Angeles but are now staying or returning, and being joined by friends from México City and beyond. This flourishing, strengthening artistic community has responded to the city's accelerated evolution with a broad range of work, from painting to conceptually driven installations; from street-level digital video to ambitious photo-documentation, filmmaking and political work; from sophisticated architectural proposals to product design associated with the internationally renowned "Nortec" musical movement.

Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana / Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y Diseño desde Tijuana was the first major traveling exhibition to explore and celebrate the vibrant interdisciplinary art scene in Tijuana, México, one of the world’s leading crucibles of cultural innovation. The exhibition featured more than fifty works by twenty of Tijuana’s most important contemporary artists, architects, designers, and filmmakers. Their bold, cutting-edge work embodied the powerful creative energy of a city transformed by crosscurrents of globalization, media, and issues of migration and identity.

Whether as the subject or the actual physical source of the materials used to create works of art, the City of Tijuana was at the core of everything in Strange New World / Extraño Nuevo Mundo, which discovered new visual, verbal, and audio forms to manifest their experience of the rapidly changing interconnected realities of the local urban and global environments.

MCASD / Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

With two locations, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is the region’s foremost forum devoted to the exploration and presentation of the art of our time, presenting works across all media created since 1950. Located in the heart of downtown San Diego and in the coastal community of La Jolla, MCASD provides an unprecedented variety of exhibition spaces and experiences for the community, showcasing an internationally recognized collection and a dynamic schedule of exhibitions and public programs.

Strange New World: Art and Design From Tijuana / Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y Diseño desde Tijuana
Featuring 41 artists
Curated by Rachel Teagle
May 20 – September 16, 2006
MCASD Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Downtown, 1100 & 1001 Kettner Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92101
MCASD.org