Mexicali Biennial

Artist Talk and Punk Patch Workshop
2025-10-04 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Join us for an artist talk by printmakers Miyo Stevens-Gandara and Usen Gandara followed by a punk patch workshop. All ages welcome. Learn about Miyo and Usen’s processes in making works for Anger is an Energy, showing at MXCL BNL LAB through October 18. Discussion followed by workshop where participants will be able to create their own “punk patch” – emblems used in punk and other subaltern cultures as a symbol of rebellious self expression. This event is free and open to the public. No registration required.
This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org.

Los Muertos Workshop - Uptown Whittier
2025-10-12 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Join us for a hands-on printmaking workshop led by artists Natalie Godinez and inspired by ancestral stories and memories. Participants are invited to create prints based on family legends and traditions. Prints may be added to a communal altar installation, forming a collective tribute to ancestral stories. Materials provided. Event is free and open to the public.
This event is part of the ongoing MXCL BNL LAB program – the research arm of the MexiCali Biennial – that investigates themes around its upcoming program PARA/normal Borders. The LAB hosts rotating exhibitions, public-facing humanities events, the MB archive, and the PARA/normal Borders Podcast.
This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org.

Natalie M. Godinez (she/her/ella) is a Los Angeles-based artist, educator, and community advocate raised in Tijuana, México. Her multidisciplinary practice—spanning textiles, printmaking, and collaborative projects—explores memory, identity, and the relationships between place and language. As a transborder dweller and immigrant mother, Godinez reflects on her dual identities through written language, visual metaphors, and process-based art. Her work invites dialogue about shared experiences, imagination, and collective transformation.
Godinez is a member of AMBOS Project (Art Made Between Opposite Sides), an artist-led initiative amplifying binational voices on border issues. She has exhibited at institutions including the Hammer Museum, Sun Valley Museum of Art, Vincent Price Art Museum, San Diego State University Gallery, Angel’s Gate Cultural Center, and the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. In 2025, she served as Mass Creativity Artist in Residence at The New Children’s Museum and joined the Artists at Work 2025–26 cohort.

Artist in Residence | Guillermo Estrada
2025-11-01 18:00 - 2026-01-10 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Almendroides, Aliens & Indígenas delves into the universe of border-based artist Guillermo Estrada, guided by his fictional character, Rancho Shampoo. The exhibition explores the use of a substance called Almendroide—a biological “cookie” that holds a significant ceremonial role within this universe as a medium for connecting with other dimensions. The show examines notions of a person’s paranormal/residential/alien status, the origins of a native person from a specific territory, and how we engage with our personal narratives to bridge realities and dimensions. These ideas unfold through a range of artistic media, including installations, video, drawings, and sculpture.
During his MFA studies at UC San Diego, Estrada coined the concept of aliendigenismo, a term combining “alien” and “indigenous.” It refers to “a way or channel used to move from one place to another.” From this idea, the term aliendígena emerges to describe a person capable of crossing natural, man-made, spiritual, cosmic, and underworld barriers. Drawing from Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of autohistoria, Estrada presents this exhibition as a means of offering insight into the world of Rancho Shampoo.
Estrada draws from his own lived experiences, fictionalizing them to construct a universe that others can enter and inhabit. To understand his work, one must recognize that three figures coexist within one person: Guillermo Estrada, Memo Navajas, and Rancho Shampoo. Their intertwined identities invite viewers to explore the boundaries between self and other, territory and belonging, story and dimension.
The bridge (boundary between the world you’ve just left and the one ahead) is both a barrier and a point of transformation. – Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Visit guillermoestrada.com to learn more about the artist’s practice.
A photo essay of this exhibition can be found HERE.
Special events related to this exhibition:
January 10, 2025 | Artist Talk with Guillermo Estrada & Rubén Ortiz-Torrez
This event was previously scheduled for Saturday, November 15
December 6 – January 10, 2025 | Front window activation by Guillermo Estrada at MXCL BNL LAB.
*Note that the gallery will be closed from December 20 – January 9, 2025 for the holidays. During this time, the exhibition can be accessed through the street “portal” allowing viewers to become spectators to the artist’s installation through the front window.

Window Installation by Guillermo Estrada and Holiday Hours
2025-12-06 14:00 - 2026-01-10 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Beginning December 6, MexiCali Biennial artist-in-residence Guillermo Estrada, will create a window installation at the MXCL BNL LAB. As part of Estrada’s current exhibition Almendroides, Aliens & Indígenas, the artist will create a graphic window “portal” as a parallax experience of the artwork, while also referencing the liminality and impermanence of borders.
Please note that the LAB will be closed from December 20 through January 9th for the holidays. We will be reopen January 10, noon – 5 p.m. for the closing of Almendroides, Aliens & Indígenas. The exhibition can be accessed through the street side window installation.
This artist-in-residency is part of the MexiCali Biennial and its research arm, MXCL BNL LAB as an investigation toward the upcoming program PARA/normal Borders.

Artist Talk | Guillermo Estrada & Rubén Ortiz-Torres
2026-01-10 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Join us for a discussion by transborder artist Guillermo Estrada and Rubén Ortiz-Torres. The artists will discuss Estrada’s current residency at the MXCL BNL LAB and themes around topics related to the border as a supernatural zone.
This event is part of an artist residency and exhibition, Guillermo Estrada: ALMENDROIDS, ALIEN & INDÍGENA on view through January 10 at MXCL BNL LAB. Light refreshments served. The artist discussion is free and open to the public. This project made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org. Additional support by Mellon Foundation and Teiger Foundation.

Guillermo Estrada, aka Rancho Shampoo is a multidisciplinary artist and performer who lives and works between Tecate, Mexicali, and San Diego. His work in installation, performance, music, and video explores borders, transcendence, and pluri-dimensional connections between the Earth, the Cosmos, and the Underground. He has exhibited and performed work in numerous venues, including the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, Centro Cultural España in Mexico City, Museo Raúl Anguiano in Guadalajara Jalisco, and Coaxial Arts in Los Angeles. For the MexiCali Biennial’s 2023 program at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside, he created an immersive installation centered on his concept “aliendígena” and staged a musical performance with the Indian Dub Orchestra. Estrada earned degrees in history from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (BA) and in studio art from the University of California, San Diego (MFA).
Rubén Ortiz-Torres is an artist who lives and works between Los Angeles and San Diego. Originally from Mexico City, he studied at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, and California Institute of the Arts (MFA). His work ranges widely across media: photographs, altered readymades, a feature film, 3D videos, large scale video installations, painting series, sculptures, customized cars, photocollages, performances, and curated exhibitions. Ortiz Torres has participated widely in solo and group shows, international exhibitions, and film festivals, and his work is held in collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City. As part of the 2022/23 MexiCali Biennial program, his lowrider-inspired cart was featured in a public performance by VisRats Mobile (a.k.a. La Carcachita). He is a Professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.

Artist Reception | Alien Excavations
2026-01-31 17:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Join us for Alien Excavations opening reception and book launch. This group exhibition highlights ALIEN – a multi-part artist publication that brings together five artists to investigate the meaning of “alienness” within the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. The book consists of three interlocking books produced with Taller California and MexiCali Biennial. Rather than looking to outer space, the artists turn toward the land itself, surfacing buried histories of extraction, migration, and Indigenous memory to reveal how colonial and imperial systems have rendered both people and environments “alien.”
The publication will be available for sale at MXCL BNL LAB during the opening and throughout the exhibition.

Alien Excavations
2026-01-31 17:00 - 2026-03-07 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Alien Excavations is an exhibition built around the small-run artist book ALIEN, unfolding through ephemeral source materials, and interactive stations.
PURCHASE ALIEN HERE.
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.

Alien Excavations Closing & Pop-up
2026-03-07 12:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
To mark the closing of Alien Excavations at the MXCL BNL LAB, Taller California will host a pop-up featuring the workshop’s past projects! Books and prints will be available from 12-5pm, including ALIEN, a three-part artist book produced by Taller California and the MexiCali Biennial. At 3pm, Taller’s founder and editor Lorena Mostajo will be in conversation with Armando Pulido to speak about this collaboration and the making of the exhibition. We hope you can join us for the final day of this project!
This exhibition marks the launch of ALIEN, collaborative book project between Taller California and the MexiCali Biennial. On the occasion of the PARA/normal Borders Lab, artists Ed Gómez, Luis G. Hernandez, Lorena Mostajo, Omar Pimienta, and Jessica Sevilla contend with the notion of the “alien” in relation to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Each created a series of images produced via digital offset prints (AL), glow-in-the-dark screen printing (I), and Risograph prints (EN) to produce three books that interlock to create ALIEN.
The artists collectively look to natural and built environments as sites of “alien” intervention that take many forms: traces of ancestral knowledge, Indigenous mythology, resource extraction, human migration, and extraterrestrial imagination. Alien
Excavations intends to expand on these presentations, showing visitors the texts, images, and visual culture that informed the final images produced by each artist.

Rooted Voices
2026-03-21 12:00 - 2026-04-11 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Featuring artists from Whittier and surrounding communities, Rooted Voices centers stories shaped by place, how neighborhoods, labor, migration, ritual, and everyday encounters leave traces that linger across generations. The exhibition highlights how stories emerge through shared conditions and relationships, through proximity, care, struggle, and collaboration.
Rooted Voices is a student-curated exhibition made possible by Whittier College’s Poet StoryLab: Narrative, Community, and the Transformative Possibilities of Brown Storytelling. Through a special topics class, students selected works that reflect the talents of local artists while connecting themes of PARA/normal Borders at the MXCL BNL LAB.
Participating Artists:
Brook A. Logan Arcega, Emilia García, Roman Luna, Santos Nuñez,
Ramón Ramírez, and Jacqueline Valenzuela
Closing Reception will be held on April 11, 2026
The closing reception will include spoken word by Whittier College student Ember Hall and music by DJ Blythe Bizzczar.
About Whittier College StoryLab
Whittier College is one of the most diverse liberal arts colleges in the nation and is designated as both a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and Minority-Serving Institution (MSI). Located in Whittier, California, the College is committed to academic excellence, civic engagement, and inclusive, interdisciplinary scholarship.
The Whittier College StoryLab initiative, supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, advances innovative experiential pedagogy and research that amplifies stories reflecting the complexity and expansiveness of “brown” identity in the United States. Led by faculty in Art and History, the program centers storytelling, intersectionality, and public humanities as tools for cultural understanding and social engagement.
Student organizers:
Brook A Logan Arcega, Megan P Barayoga, Clark Paul Ehman, Yoselin Xiclaly Estrada, Hector Alberto Gastelum, Lilianna C Gorbea, Ember Hall, Mikayla I Hernandez, Ethan C Luevano, Cuauhtemoc Jude Luna, Skye Mendoza, Jessica Rios, Joaquin A Sanchez, Michelle G Sifuentes, Victor Soria Jr., Andrea Toledo

Brown Futurity: Artists and Their Archives
2026-03-21 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Whittier College, 13406 Philadelphia St, Whittier, CA, 90602, United States
Brown Futurity: Artists and Their Archives brings together artists and archivists for a timely and urgent conversation about preservation, authorship, and legacy. This public panel centers artists and explores archives as powerful tools for storytelling, self-determination, and cultural futurity.
The discussion features Xaviera Flores, Librarian and Archivist at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, artist and cultural worker Sandra de la Loza, and mural and graffiti artist Man One. Together, they will examine how artists can build, protect, and activate their archives as living documents of creative practice.
Designed to give artists agency over the long-term impact of their work, the panel serves both as a practical guide and a conceptual exploration. Participants will learn about archival tools and resources available to artists—including record management strategies, documentation practices, and approaches to organizing a lifetime of work. The conversation will also address how artists engage archives as part of their artistic practice, reshaping memory and history through self-authored narratives.
As the first event in a two-part series, Brown Futurity invites participants to think expansively about legacy. Securing one’s archive becomes not only a logistical task, but an intentional act of history-making, futurity, and storytelling.
First Look at Rooted Voices Exhibition
Prior to the panel, guests are invited to a special first look at Rooted Voices, a student-led exhibition at the MXCL BNL LAB (6545 Greenleaf Ave., Whittier) beginning at 1:30 p.m. Organized by students from Whittier College, the exhibition features artists from Whittier and surrounding communities whose works center stories shaped by place, labor, migration, ritual, and shared experience. The MXCL BNL LAB also houses the MexiCali Biennial’s archive, with select items on display. Following the preview, attendees will walk together to Whittier College for the 3:00 p.m. Brown Futurity: Artists and Their Archives panel in Hoover 100. The walk is approximately 10 minutes in duration. The LAB will close at 2:30 p.m. for its staff to be able to attend Brown Futurity. Learn more about Rooted Voices HERE.

About Whittier College StoryLab
Whittier College is one of the most diverse liberal arts colleges in the nation and is designated as both a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and Minority-Serving Institution (MSI). Located in Whittier, California, the College is committed to academic excellence, civic engagement, and inclusive, interdisciplinary scholarship.
The Whittier College StoryLab initiative, supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, advances innovative experiential pedagogy and research that amplifies stories reflecting the complexity and expansiveness of “brown” identity in the United States. Led by faculty in Art and History, the program centers storytelling, intersectionality, and public humanities as tools for cultural understanding and social engagement.
Xaviera Flores is the Librarian and Archivist at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. The center is dedicated to the development of scholarly research on the Chicano-Latino population and Flores is integral to this mission. She oversees all library, archives, and museum services, including outreach, instruction, grant projects, and donor relations. She also works closely with students and partner organizations to build stronger ties between community and UCLA.
Sandra de la Loza’s research-based practice investigates the underlayers of our present landscape as a means to open portals and envision future worlds through the exercise of collective memory and political imagination. She is the founder of The Pochx Research Society of Erased and Invisible History, an on-going collaborative project that engages the subject of “History” through critical inquiry and artistic processes. For the last two decades her work has approached History as site and subject and has grown into archival, social and site-specific investigations and immersive installations. Her interest in the silences, exclusions and erasures of the past is in what it reveals of the present, and how these “ghosts” can make visible erased histories, unlock the imagination, and create counter memories for the future.
Man One is an artist, curator, multi-award winning illustrator, mentor and entrepreneur who believes in the transformational power of art and its power to save lives and make the world a better place. Man One believes art gives mankind an essential and irreplaceable cultural language in which to express and know itself. Man One believes art can transcend cultural and socio-economic barriers, fostering understanding, mutual respect and unity among disparate peoples. Man One believes these things are possible because he’s seen them happen through the power of his own art and the art of others. Growing up in Los Angeles, Man One developed his love for art, developing his skills as a graffiti artist on the streets of LA.

Salon & Networking Mixer
2026-03-27 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Please join us on Friday, March 27 from 6 – 8:00 p.m. at the MXCL BNL LAB for a salon aimed at bringing together artists, humanities experts, and community members in cross-cultural exchanges through casual conversations. This gathering invites stakeholders within the city of Whittier and surrounding areas who are interested in shaping the cultural future of the region.
During the evening, we will engage in an open discussion about the cultural climate of Whittier while connecting with fellow creatives, educators, and professionals who live and work in the area. As part of this dialogue, we will also begin imagining what a future Whittier Arts Center could look like — a shared space dedicated to exhibitions, public programs, artist studios and community storytelling that supports the creative life of the city.
The MXCL BNL LAB is located at 6545 Greenleaf Ave in Uptown Whittier and serves as a research arm of the MexiCali Biennial — a 501(c)(3) arts non-profit focused on cultural production within the borderlands of Mexico and California. The LAB operates as a space for experimentation, dialogue, and community-driven cultural programming.
Agenda
Refreshments served throughout the event

6:00 Doors Open
6:30 Opening Remarks and Ice Breaker
8:00 Doors Close. We encourage you to dine and drink at the small businesses throughout Uptown Whittier.
This event is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Here & There, Then & Now: MexiCali Biennial 20th Anniversary Exhibition & Book Launch
2026-04-25 18:00 - 2026-06-13 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
The MexiCali Biennial celebrates twenty years of artistic experimentation, cross-border collaboration, and cultural exchange with the exhibition Here & There, Then & Now and the release of the landmark publication MexiCali Biennial: Art, Actions, Exchanges Since 2006.
Presented at the MXCL BNL LAB in Whittier, the exhibition reflects on two decades of binational programming that has shaped conversations around art, identity, migration, and cultural production across the California–Mexico borderlands.
LAB HoursSaturdays, 12:00 PM – 5:00 PMor by appointment

Here & There, Then & Now brings together selected works, archival documentation, and reconstructed projects from past MexiCali Biennial programs. The exhibition offers visitors a rare opportunity to encounter the evolving history of the Biennial through artworks, installations, photographs, and materials that trace the organization’s collaborative and experimental spirit.
Over the past twenty years, the MexiCali Biennial has worked with more than 150 artists across a wide range of media including installation, video, sculpture, performance, and socially engaged practices. Projects have unfolded in museums, galleries, public spaces, private homes, swap meets, and community sites across the Californias, emphasizing accessibility, dialogue, and the fluid exchange of ideas across borders.
Participating artists include:
Carlos Beltrán Aréchiga, Andrew Armstrong, Pablo Castañeda & Eduardo Kintero, Carmina Escobar, Ed Gómez, Fidel Hernandez, Luis G. Hernandez, Rebeca Hernandez, Albert Lopez Jr., Matt MacFarland, Ruben Ochoa, Nancy Popp, Mike Rogers, Paulina Sanchez, Jessica Sevilla, Sergio Teran, Diane Williams

Book Launch
Coinciding with the exhibition is the release of the bilingual publication: MexiCali Biennial: Art, Actions, Exchanges Since 2006
Produced in collaboration with The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum (The Cheech), this publication provides the first comprehensive account of the MexiCali Biennial’s twenty-year history. Featuring scholarly essays, artist–curator dialogues, and extensive image galleries, the book documents the evolving themes and artistic contributions that have defined the Biennial since its founding.
More than a catalogue, the book serves as an archive of a transborder art movement and a record of the artists and communities who have shaped it.
Contributors include Amy Sara Carroll, Amy Pederson Converse, JV Decemirale, Guillermo Estrada, Alejandro Espinoza Galindo, Maria Esther Fernandez, Ed Gomez, Luis G. Hernandez, April Lillard-Gomez, Emmanuel Ortega, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Rosalía Romero, Sam Romo-White, Joaquin Segura, and Pilar Tompkins Rivas.
The publication will be available for purchase online, at the MXCL BNL LAB and at The Cheech.
