Planos planos: pinturas del folclor paranormal cachanilla
2026-04-18 15:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Arista 1701, Colonia Nueva, Mexicali, Baja, Mexico
Presented at Arista 1701 in Mexicali, as part of Semana del Arte 101, the MexiCali Biennial presents Planos planos: pinturas del folclor paranormal cachanilla (Flat Planes: Paintings of Mexicali Paranormal Folklore), an exhibition bringing together artists from Mexicali whose work engages with the Biennial’s current theme: PARA/normal Borders.
Working primarily through painting, the exhibition examines local paranormal folklore through overlaps between everyday environments, personal imaginaries, philosophical inquiries, invisible presences, and border memories. The artists span different generations, enriching a collective perspective on the cachanilla imaginary—‘cachanilla’ being the term used for people from Mexicali and their local identity.
PARA/normal Borders is a nomadic series of exhibitions and programs that conceives the CaliBaja region as a liminal space where spirits, ancestors, and displaced identities move freely.
Participating artists: Pablo Castañeda, Annia Monroy, Heriberto Morales, André Pereda, Mahra Zamora

MB Viewing Room
Coinciding with Planos planos, an MB Viewing Room will be open on the second floor of Arista 1701. The space features a selection of MexiCali Biennial publications available for purchase, including MexiCali Biennial: Art, Actions, Exchanges Since 2006, the first comprehensive account of the Biennial’s twenty-year history; ALIEN, produced with Taller California and curator Armando Pulido, with contributions by artists Ed Gómez, Luis G. Hernandez, Lorena Gómez Mostajo, Omar Pimienta, and Jessica Sevilla; and Border Patches, an artist book by Biennial co-founder Luis G. Hernandez, produced in collaboration with i21.
Additionally, works by MexiCali Biennial artists Ed Gomez, Luis G. Hernandez, Fidel Hernandez, Bibiana Padilla, and Adrian Pereda will be on display.

BOOK LAUNCH & Opening Reception
2026-04-25 18:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Let’s celebrate as we launch MexiCali Biennial’s release of its landmark publication, MexiCali Biennial: Art, Actions, Exchanges Since 2006 and 20th anniversary exhibition Here & There, Then & Now.
The Book Launch and opening reception will take place at the MXCL BNL LAB, the organization’s research arm located in Uptown Whittier, CA. We’ll be joined by Tamales el primo and their infamous cart, with a DJ set and archive exhibition.
Here & There, Then & Now 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
MexiCali Biennial: Art, Actions, Exchanges Since 2006 is available for purchase at MXCL BNL LAB, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum (co-publisher) or wherever books are sold.
PURCHASE BOOK IN OUR ONLINE STORE

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.

Brown Futurity: How to Create an Archive
2026-05-16 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Brown Futurity: How to Create an Archive is a hands-on workshop designed to address persistent gaps in knowledge around artist-led and community-based archives. While institutions have historically shaped what is preserved and remembered, many artists and communities continue to face barriers in documenting and sustaining their own histories. This workshop responds to that gap by offering practical tools and critical frameworks for building archives from the ground up.
Presented as part of Whittier College Poet StoryLab, and led by archivist Xaviera Flores, the session brings together practical expertise and community-centered approaches to archiving.
Participants will be guided through foundational questions that shape archival practice: How can we begin to preserve and document our own materials? What are the first steps in organizing an artist archive? How do we determine what to keep, and what to let go? What does it mean to collect responsibly, and for whom is the archive being built?
Designed for artists, cultural workers, and community members, this session provides a practical toolkit to begin building sustainable archives, while encouraging participants to think critically about authorship, access, and long-term stewardship.

Dille’ xhon: Inheriting our Mothers’ Language
2026-05-30 13:00 - 15:00 (America/Denver) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Join us for a Zapotec language panel.
Acompáñanos a un panel sobre la lengua zapoteca.

Dille’ xhon: Inheriting our Mothers’ Language (English)
Dille’ xhon: Da’ busuiku’an xna’llo (Zapotec)
Dille’ xhon: Herencia de nuestras madres (Español)
This panel features a community-engaged research project, Dille’ xhon: Un programa Extraescolar Zoochileño (Dille’ xhon: A Zoochileño Afterschool Program), rooted in the teaching of Dille’ xhon (Zapotec/o). Created in 2025, the project includes materials and pedagogical approaches from Santiago Zoochila, located in Oaxaca, Mexico, used to design an introductory course for its descendants living in Los Angeles with the goal of preserving their maternal language. The panel will feature students and facilitators from the project. This event will be multilingual, with translation provided to ensure accessibility for all participants.
Este panel presenta un proyecto de investigación con enfoque comunitario, Dille’ xhon: Un programa extraescolar zoochileño (Dille’ xhon: A Zoochileño Afterschool Program), centrado en la enseñanza del Dille’ xhon (zapoteco). Creado en 2025, el proyecto incorpora materiales y enfoques pedagógicos provenientes de Santiago Zoochila, ubicado en Oaxaca, México, que se utilizan para diseñar un curso introductorio dirigido a sus descendientes que viven en Los Ángeles, con el objetivo de preservar su lengua materna. El panel contará con la participación de estudiantes y facilitadores del proyecto. Este evento será multilingüe y contará con traducción para garantizar la accesibilidad de todas las personas participantes.
About/Sobre Whittier College StoryLab:
The Poet 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.
La iniciativa Poet StoryLab, apoyada por una subvención de la Fundación Andrew W. Mellon, impulsa una pedagogía experimental innovadora y proyectos de investigación que amplifican narrativas que reflejan la complejidad y amplitud de la identidad “brown” en los Estados Unidos. Dirigido por profesorado de las áreas de Arte e Historia, el programa se centra en la narración, la interseccionalidad y las humanidades públicas como herramientas para el entendimiento cultural y la participación social.

RE+actions: Performing the Archive
2026-06-06 15:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
Join us for an afternoon of performances that revisit key moments from past MexiCali Biennial programs. RE+actions brings together three Biennial alumni to re-engage a previous performance as part of the current exhibition, HERE & THERE, THEN & NOW. This exhibition brings together archival materials alongside select artworks, re-presented in a chronological showcase.
RE+actions invited artists include Carmina Escobar, Rebeca Hernandez, and Annabel Turrado.
Schedule of events:
3:00 p.m. Rebeca Hernandez performs Façade, originally part of Cannibalism in the New World (2013) at Vincent Price Art Museum.
3:30 p.m. Carmina Escobar revisits Rituals of Propagation previously performed across the border fence between Mexicali and Calexico for Calafia: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise (2020).
4:00 Annabel Turrado reactivates Raspado (Abolish ICE), a durational performance previously performed at Parque Héroes de Chapultepec in Mexicali as part of Land of Milk & Honey (2023).

MexiCali Biennial: Then, Now, Next Mini-Symposium and LAB Closing event
2026-06-13 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MXCL BNL LAB, 6545 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601
The MexiCali Biennial presents a miniature symposium dedicated to highlighting scholars’, curators’, and artists’ contributions to the retrospective catalog, MexiCali Biennial: Art, Actions, Exchanges Since 2006. This symposium consists of two panels: the first explores the past, present, and future of the MexiCali Biennial and border art as a discipline; the second is a discussion on collaborations between border artists and curators within and outside of museums.
Each panel will address broader issues and key themes defining contemporary art in both Californias over the last few decades and into the future, including portability, site-specificity, local–global and center–periphery dichotomies, archives, surveillance, border activations, writing border art histories, and curatorial strategies for navigating the border. These conversations will examine the MexiCali Biennial’s indelible impact on U.S.–Mexico borderlands art, as well as the curatorial challenges posed by exhibiting within the distinct contexts of the museum and the physical border itself.
This event is organized in conjunction with the anniversary exhibition Here & There, Then & Now that is currently on view at the MXCL BNL LAB. This program is made possible in part through the generous support of the Mellon Foundation and California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. This is final scheduled event at the MXCL BNL LAB (MexiCali Biennial Lab).
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
3:00pm OPENING REMARKS
Ed Gomez (MexiCali Biennial and CSU San Bernardino)
Panel 1:
3:15pm BORDER (RE)HISTORICIZATIONS
Moderator:
Armando Pulido (Huntington Library)
Panelists:
Rosalía Romero (Pomona College)
Alejandro Espinoza (Universidad de Baja California, Mexicali)
Amy Sara Carroll (University of California, San Diego)
Luis G. Hernandez (MexiCali Biennial and SDSU Imperial Valley)
4:15pm COFFEE BREAK
Panel 2:
4:30pm ARTIST-CURATOR RELATIONALITY IN/OUT OF MUSEUMS
Moderator:
Sam Romo-White (MexiCali Biennial)
Panelists:
Ed Gomez (MexiCali Biennial and CSU San Bernardino)
Pilar Tompkins-Rivas (Altamed Art Collection)
Emmanuel Ortega (University of Illinois, Chicago)
Isidro Perez-Garcia (Artist)
Attendees are encouraged to walk to Poets Gardens/Nixon Plaza (13002 Philadelphia St, Whittier) for a no-host dinner and drinks.

PARA/normal Borders Conversation I: Josh Kun + Alex Rivera
2026-09-09 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Whittier College Shannon Center, 6760 Painter Ave, Whittier, CA, 90601, United States
Josh Kun + Alex Rivera Part I of the PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series
Scholar Josh Kun (Cultural historian; USC Vice Provost for the Arts and USC Annenberg Professor of Communication) and Alex Rivera (Filmmaker and Co-Founder of Borderlands Cinematic Arts at ASU) explore how music, film, media, and speculative storytelling shape the ways histories are recorded, circulated, and remembered within the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Together, they will present work and engage in a conversation that considers how artistic and scholarly practices connect communities, recover overlooked histories, and imagine new futures.
PARA/normal Borders is the 2026–27 edition of the MexiCali Biennial, a multidisciplinary exhibition and public humanities initiative exploring the borderlands as a space where visible and invisible histories converge. Rather than treating the border solely as a geopolitical boundary, the project approaches it as a cultural, psychological, ecological, and technological condition that shapes contemporary life.
Inspired by the concept of the borderlands as a “thin place,” PARA/normal Borders considers how migration, language, memory, Indigenous knowledge, media, surveillance, and speculative futures intersect across the California–Mexico border region. Through exhibitions, performances, publications, research initiatives, and public conversations, the Biennial invites artists, writers, scholars, and communities to examine the many ways borders continue to influence how we remember, imagine, and inhabit the world.
The PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series brings together MacArthur Fellows whose work expands our understanding of borders across literature, film, visual art, music, and critical scholarship. This program is co-presented by the MexiCali Biennial and the University of California, San Diego Department of Literature’s New Writing Series, in partnership with the University of California, San Diego Department of Visual Arts and the Archive for New Poetry.
This event is free and open to the public and will take place at the Ruth B. Shannon Center for the Performing Arts on the Whittier College Campus.A public reception will immediately follow the event.REGISTER HERE OR CLICK IMAGE BELOW

→ Learn more about PARA/normal Borders Discussion II: Sky Hopinka + Maggie Nelson
→ Learn more about PARA/normal Borders Discussion III: Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten

Josh Kun is a cultural historian, writer, and curator whose work focuses on the arts and politics of cultural connection. He is the inaugural Vice Provost for the Arts at USC where he is Professor and Chair in Cross-Cultural Communication in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His books include Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, Songs in the Key of Los Angeles, The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles, and Double Vision: The Photography of George Rodriguez. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, New Yorker, and many other publications. As a curator of exhibitions and performances, he has worked with Getty, The Huntington, Grammy Museum, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, California African American Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, among others. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Berlin Prize, and an American Book Award.
Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization, migration, and technology. His first feature film, a cyberpunk thriller set in Tijuana, Mexico, ‘Sleep Dealer,’ won multiple awards at Sundance and Berlin. Rivera’s second feature, a documentary/scripted hybrid set in an immigrant detention center, ‘The Infiltrators,’ won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and was released theatrically in the U.S. Rivera’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Creative Capital, the Open Society Institute, and many others. He is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow and an Associate Professor of Filmmaking Practice at ASU’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School.
About the Organizers:
The MexiCali Biennial is a nonprofit contemporary art organization dedicated to exploring the cultural, social, and political complexities of the California–Mexico border region through exhibitions, research, publications, and public programming. Since its founding in 2006, the Biennial has brought together artists, scholars, writers, and community partners to examine the U.S.–Mexico border not simply as a geopolitical boundary, but as a dynamic site of exchange, creativity, and critical inquiry. The 2026–27 edition, PARA/normal Borders, explores the borderlands as a “thin place” where histories, memories, languages, technologies, and speculative futures converge. Through exhibitions, conversations, performances, and educational initiatives across Southern California and Baja California, the MexiCali Biennial fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and expands public understanding of the border as a space of artistic experimentation and cultural imagination. Learn more at mexicalibiennial.org.
Whittier College is a private liberal arts institution founded in 1887, recognized for its commitment to interdisciplinary learning, civic engagement, and social justice. Located in the historic city of Whittier, California, the College has long supported public dialogue through exhibitions, performances, lectures, and community partnerships that connect scholarship with the broader public.
UC San Diego’s New Writing Series invites local, national, and international authors to read and perform throughout the academic year. Welcoming a wide range of authors and genres, including playwrights, poets, translators, essayists, critics, fiction writers, and performance artists, the New Writing Series celebrates both emerging and established award-winning writers. Readers also include Department of Literature faculty and graduate students in the MFA Program in Writing. The readings are followed by in-depth question and answer periods that center on craft and artistic practice.
PARA/normal Borders is made possible through support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation celebrating the Foundation’s 45th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows with Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45.
Additional support is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Teiger Foundation, California Humanities – a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities – and the California Arts Council.

PARA/normal Borders Conversation II: Sky Hopinka + Maggie Nelson
2026-10-15 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | University of California, San Diego, Atkinson Hall Auditorium, 3195 Voigt Dr, La Jolla, CA, 92093
Sky Hopinka + Maggie Nelson
Part II of the PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series
Through film, writing, and critical inquiry, Sky Hopinka and Maggie Nelson explore how artistic practice becomes a way of knowing. Working across experimental film, creative nonfiction, philosophy, and visual culture, their presentations of individual work and conversation will consider how memory, perception, language, and embodied experience shape our understanding of place, history, and one another. Together, they will examine how art creates new ways of seeing, remembering, and imagining the world.
PARA/normal Borders is the 2026–27 edition of the MexiCali Biennial, a multidisciplinary exhibition and public humanities initiative exploring the borderlands as a space where visible and invisible histories converge. Rather than treating the border solely as a geopolitical boundary, the project approaches it as a cultural, psychological, ecological, and technological condition that shapes contemporary life.
Inspired by the concept of the borderlands as a “thin place,” PARA/normal Borders considers how migration, language, memory, Indigenous knowledge, media, surveillance, and speculative futures intersect across the California–Mexico border region. Through exhibitions, performances, publications, research initiatives, and public conversations, the Biennial invites artists, writers, scholars, and communities to examine the many ways borders continue to influence how we remember, imagine, and inhabit the world.
The PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series brings together MacArthur Fellows whose work expands our understanding of borders across literature, film, visual art, music, and critical scholarship.
This program is co-presented by the MexiCali Biennial and the University of California, San Diego Department of Literature’s New Writing Series, in partnership with the University of California, San Diego Geisel Library’s Archive for New Poetry, Department of Visual Arts, Indigenous Futures Institute, and Gallery QI.
This event is free and open to the public.
A public reception will immediately follow the event.
→ Learn more about PARA/normal Borders Discussion I: Josh Kun + Alex Rivera
→ Learn more about PARA/normal Borders Discussion III: Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, CA, Portland, OR, and Milwaukee, WI. In Portland, he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape–designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal and non-fictional forms of media.
Maggie Nelson:
[biography forthcoming]
About the Organizers:
The MexiCali Biennial is a nonprofit contemporary art organization dedicated to exploring the cultural, social, and political complexities of the California–Mexico border region through exhibitions, research, publications, and public programming. Since its founding in 2006, the Biennial has brought together artists, scholars, writers, and community partners to examine the U.S.–Mexico border not simply as a geopolitical boundary, but as a dynamic site of exchange, creativity, and critical inquiry. The 2026–27 edition, PARA/normal Borders, explores the borderlands as a “thin place” where histories, memories, languages, technologies, and speculative futures converge. Through exhibitions, conversations, performances, and educational initiatives across Southern California and Baja California, the MexiCali Biennial fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and expands public understanding of the border as a space of artistic experimentation and cultural imagination. Learn more at mexicalibiennial.org.
UC San Diego’s New Writing Series invites local, national, and international authors to read and perform throughout the academic year. Welcoming a wide range of authors and genres, including playwrights, poets, translators, essayists, critics, fiction writers, and performance artists, the New Writing Series celebrates both emerging and established award-winning writers. Readers also include Department of Literature faculty and graduate students in the MFA Program in Writing. The readings are followed by in-depth question and answer periods that center on craft and artistic practice.
PARA/normal Borders is made possible through support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation celebrating the Foundation’s 45th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows with Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45.
Additional support is provided by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Teiger Foundation, California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the California Arts Council.

PARA/normal Borders Conversation III: Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten
2027-01-13 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | University of California, San Diego, Atkinson Hall Auditorium, 3195 Voigt Dr, La Jolla, CA, 92093
Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten
Part III of the PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series
Language is one of the many borders that shape our lives. It carries histories, preserves memory, and creates new possibilities for connection across difference. Writers Cristina Rivera Garza and Fred Moten will both read from their work and then engage in a conversation about translation, poetry, and collective study, examining how literature moves across linguistic, cultural, and institutional boundaries. Together, they explore how literary practice can confront history, imagine new futures, and expand the possibilities of shared knowledge.
PARA/normal Borders is the 2026–27 edition of the MexiCali Biennial, a multidisciplinary exhibition and public humanities initiative exploring the borderlands as a space where visible and invisible histories converge. Rather than treating the border solely as a geopolitical boundary, the project approaches it as a cultural, psychological, ecological, and technological condition that shapes contemporary life.
Inspired by the concept of the borderlands as a “thin place,” PARA/normal Borders considers how migration, language, memory, Indigenous knowledge, media, surveillance, and speculative futures intersect across the California–Mexico border region. Through exhibitions, performances, publications, research initiatives, and public conversations, the Biennial invites artists, writers, scholars, and communities to examine the many ways borders continue to influence how we remember, imagine, and inhabit the world.
The PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series brings together MacArthur Fellows whose work expands our understanding of borders across literature, film, visual art, music, and critical scholarship.
This program is co-presented by MacArthur Foundation, the MexiCali Biennial and the University of California, San Diego Department of Literature’s New Writing Series, in partnership with the University of California, San Diego Department of Visual Arts and the Archive for New Poetry.
This event is free and open to the public.
Public reception immediately following event.
→ Learn more about PARA/normal Borders Discussion I: Josh Kun + Alex Rivera
→ Learn more about PARA/normal Borders Discussion II: Sky Hopinka + Maggie Nelson

Cristina Rivera Garza is a Mexican writer, historian, and critic. She is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice, the English-language version of El invencible verano de Liliana, as well as numerous works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and literary criticism, including The Taiga Syndrome, The Iliac Crest, and Autobiography of Cotton. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, she is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston. Her work explores memory, gendered violence, archives, territory, and the shifting borders between literary forms.
Fred Moten teaches in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. He has written several books of criticism/poetry, the latest of which are consent not to be a single being and préfume. Moten is co-author with Stefano Harney of three books, including most recently All Incomplete. He has collaborated on many projects with artist Wu Tsang, including the 2016 book Who Touched Me? Moten also frequently accompanies instrumentalists/composers Gerald Cleaver and Brandon López. His latest album with López is called Revision. Moten works on all of this with his comrade, scholar Laura Harris, their children, Julian and Lorenzo, and many others.
About the Organizers:
The MexiCali Biennial is a nonprofit contemporary art organization dedicated to exploring the cultural, social, and political complexities of the California–Mexico border region through exhibitions, research, publications, and public programming. Since its founding in 2006, the Biennial has brought together artists, scholars, writers, and community partners to examine the U.S.–Mexico border not simply as a geopolitical boundary, but as a dynamic site of exchange, creativity, and critical inquiry. The 2026–27 edition, PARA/normal Borders, explores the borderlands as a “thin place” where histories, memories, languages, technologies, and speculative futures converge. Through exhibitions, conversations, performances, and educational initiatives across Southern California and Baja California, the MexiCali Biennial fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and expands public understanding of the border as a space of artistic experimentation and cultural imagination. Learn more at mexicalibiennial.org.
UC San Diego’s New Writing Series invites local, national, and international authors to read and perform throughout the academic year. Welcoming a wide range of authors and genres, including playwrights, poets, translators, essayists, critics, fiction writers, and performance artists, the New Writing Series celebrates both emerging and established award-winning writers. Readers also include Department of Literature faculty and graduate students in the MFA Program in Writing. The readings are followed by in-depth question and answer periods that center on craft and artistic practice.
PARA/normal Borders is made possible through support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation celebrating the Foundation’s 45th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows with Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45.
Additional support is provided by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Teiger Foundation, California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the California Arts Council.
