Alien Excavations
Alien Excavations is an exhibition built around the small-run artist book ALIEN, unfolding through ephemeral source materials, and interactive stations.
ALIEN began as an idea “in space,” emerging from the MexiCali Biennial’s PARA/normal Borders Lab as a speculative publishing project that both embodies and interrogates the concept of alienness within and beyond the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Designed by Taller California with curator Armando Pulido the publication takes the form of a three-book architecture—interlocking yet separable volumes printed in offset, glow-in-the-dark, and Risograph processes. Artists Ed Gómez, Luis G. Hernandez, Lorena Gómez Mostajo, Omar Pimienta, and Jessica Sevilla each produced distinct image series that are pulled apart, recombined, and reorganized. In this way, ALIEN functions as a curatorial archive: a modular documentation system where meaning is produced through assembly, misalignment, and reconfiguration.
The publication situates the term “alien” within overlapping historical registers: from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which codified the legal dehumanization of non-citizens, to the science-fiction mythology of Alien (1979), which aestheticized fear of the unknown. Rather than treating “alienness” as extraterrestrial fantasy, the artists excavate terrestrial histories embedded in Baja California and the American Southwest—resource extraction, Indigenous knowledge systems, ecological transformation, and contemporary border enforcement. Through this lens, ALIEN reframes the archive itself as haunted: a site where legal language, pop culture, and material landscapes converge to produce enduring structures of othering.
ALIEN will be available for purchase during the exhibition.
Artist Reception January 31 at 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Taller California is a small press & printing workshop located in the San Diego-Tijuana region. It publishes vibrant artist books that engage with the border as a sociopolitical place and as a liminal and creative space. It is committed to hybrid forms and multilingualism. Taller California’s collaborative and experimental ethos creates new modes of production and distribution of printed matter and books. Visit tallercalifornia.org for more info.
This publication was made possible through generous support
from the American Council of Learned Societies.