Panel Statement
Panel: Mind the Gap
El Paso, Texas/Juarez, Mexico is one of the largest bi-national urban environments in the world. The cities of El Paso and Juarez have become increasingly isolated from one another since January of 2008, when drug violence in Mexico began to climb to unprecedented levels. The Rubin Center has been a site for the development of a series of cross-border projects that unite residents on both sides of the border using both technological and tactile experiences, including Tania Candiani’s Battleground (2009), Ivan Abreu’s Cross Coordinates (2010), Arcangel Constantini’s contra <~> flujo (2010), and a year-long, in-process project with LA based artists Mario Ybarra and Karla Diaz of Slanguage, that connects youth on both sides of the border using urban tactics and virtual communities (on exhibition beginning May 2012).
- Kerry Doyle is the Associate Curator and Assistant Director of the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts (Texas, USA) where she is in charge of education and community outreach and participates in curatorial projects with a focus on contemporary Latin American art and cross-border dialogue. She spent fifteen years in social service and community education in Chicago, El Paso, and Juarez and specializes in activities that engage diverse sectors of the border community. Recent curatorial projects engaging with border dynamics include Battleground: Tania Candiani and Regina José Galindo (2009), Contra Flujo: Independence and Revolution with Karla Jasso, Laboratorio Arte Alameda (2010), Fernando Llanos, Revolutionary Imaginary: The Death of Video Man (2010). She holds a B.A. in Political Science from De Paul University in Chicago, and a B.A. in Drawing and Printmaking/M.A. in Latin American and Border Studies from the University of Texas at El Paso, US.