Please welcome our curatorial team for the upcoming MexiCali Biennial program, The Land of Milk and Honey. We are honored to work with guest curators Rosalia Romero and Enid Baxter Ryce along with MB co-founders Luis G. Hernandez and Ed Gomez.
Rosalía Romero, Ph.D., is an art historian of Latin American and Latinx modern and contemporary art, specializing in the art and visual culture of Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Her research examines the relationship between anarchism and revolutionary art in Mexico, the U.S., and South America. She is currently at work on a book manuscript, titled Transborder Anarchism and Revolutionary Art in Greater Mexico, 1890-1940. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright-García Robles Commission, the Swann Foundation at the Library of Congress, the Getty Research Institute, and the Ibero-American Institute (Berlin). Rosalía is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Art History at Pomona College. She received her PhD from the Department of Art, Art History& Visual Studies at Duke University in 2019. She h as an M.A. in Art History from Duke University and a B.A. in Communications from the University of California San Diego.
Enid Baxter Ryce is an internationally exhibited artist, filmmaker and musician specializing in large-scale collaborative participatory projects that communicate a sense of place across the disciplines of art, science and history. She has won numerous governmental and foundation awards and grants for her work as an artist and arts educator. Ryce has created multi-year large-scale community-based environmental arts projects for multiple festivals and conferences including the Philip Glass Center for Arts, Science and the Environment (2011 – present) the Bay-Delta Science Conference, (2010 – 2019), the Henry Miller Library, the Crocker Art Museum and the Armory Center for the Arts – supported by the Irvine Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her artworks have been featured at venues including the National Gallery of Art and Library of Congress, Washington, D.C; the J.P. Getty Museum, Director’s Guild of America and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Location One and Academy of Art and Sciences, New York City; Sundance, Park City UT; The Kunsthalle Vienna; The Arnolfini in London; Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; CCA Andratx, Mallorca and have been written about in The New York Times, Artforum, Artreviews, The Los Angeles Times, and many others. Ryce received her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, NY with a fellowship at Yale University and her MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Ryce is Professor of Cinematic Arts and Environmental Studies and Director of the California State University Monterey Bay Salinas Center for Arts and Culture.
Luis G. Hernandez is a practicing visual artist, curator, adjunct art instructor at San Diego State University, Imperial Valley (SDSU-IV) and Imperial Valley Community College (IVC), and director of Steppling Art Gallery at SDSU, IV. The aim of Steppling Art gallery is to expose the SDSU-IV campus community to cutting-edge artistic practices and exhibitions by contemporary artists and cultural producers working professionally in the field. The activities held at the gallery are carefully selected and organized so that they are integrally connected to the community they serve. The gallery strives to expose the work of local and underrepresented artists and to present projects that deal with border issues, pedagogy, and other subject matter pertinent to the SDSU-IV academic course offerings. Hernandez’s personal art production consists of sculptures, paintings, drawings, collages, and installations that respond in subtle ways to the space where they are exhibited. The artist makes provocative, humorous, and many times absurd associations between context, materials, and language, working through these elements as if they were sculptural spaces, and incorporating subject matter that points to art history, politics, and border issues.
Ed Gomez is an artist, curator, and educator located in Los Angeles, CA. His interdisciplinary art practice revolves around the questioning of exhibition practices, institutional framework and historical models of artistic production. His academic research includes border art, alternative art exhibition platforms and concepts revolving around identity and border politics. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) and specializes in art and technology with an emphasis on 3D software fabrication and digital art. Previous courses taught include art history special topics courses Art and Violence and Art and Death. Gomez currently serves as Interim Graduate Studies Coordinator for the Art and Design Department’s Master of Fine Art program as well as sits on the Latin American Studies/Latinx Advisory Board and Public Art Committee at CSUSB. He also serves as the liaison between the university and the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art of the Riverside Art Museum as well as coordinates the shared Artist in Residency program. He serves on both the San Bernardino Valley College (SBVC) and Rio Hondo Community College advisory boards for their graphic design program advisory committees. Gomez has exhibited nationally and internationally with recent exhibitions in Luxembourg, Istanbul, and Berlin.