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.