Jaime Ruiz Otis: the Art of Waste in Tijuana

JAIME RUIZ OTIS: THE ART OF WASTE IN TIJUANA

______

A Thesis

Presented to the

Faculty of

San Diego State University

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

Latin American Studies

______

Elizabeth Anne Flesh

Fall 2012

iii

Elizabeth Anne Flesh

DEDICATION

I dedicate this thesis to the artist, Jaime Ruiz Otis. Beginning with my interest in his

work Tapete Radial (Radial Rug) in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, to a friendship we have developed throughout the years I have conducted research, I am

honored to be one of many who are inspired by and encouraged to share his story, his works

and his spirit. My hope is that the words on these pages accurately portray not only the work

he has done, the foundation he has established, but also the passion he embodies to make

significant change in Tijuana, and the world. Though his humility would never allow him to

say this, his work – and his personality – is transformational. Thank you, Jaime, for sharing

all of this with me.

I also dedicate this thesis to my mother, Carole Prewett. She has been my rock and

my confidant. While she did not always understand my decision to study the art of Latin

America, she always accepted it, and me, even when that meant hiking to the top of the

Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, and riding through Mexico City in many numerous taxis.

I am thankful to know such a strong woman, who sees that strength in me.

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

Jaime Ruiz Otis: The Art of Waste in Tijuana by Elizabeth Anne Flesh Master of Arts in Latin American Studies San Diego State University, 2012

Jaime Ruiz Otis emerged on the Tijuana art scene at the turn of the twenty-first century. A native to the border and entering adulthood with the transition to a post-NAFTA world of globalization and import/exportation, Ruiz Otis “found” his art among the industrial trash and recycling dumpsters in the many maquiladoras scattered throughout the Tijuana border region. Taking this discarded material, Jaime Ruiz Otis turns this “trash” into works of art that highlight and explain an important geographic and cultural region. He creates minimalist installations that address the economic and cultural reality unique to border life with a twist of irony as what was once cast off and discarded is now considered symbolic, artistically significant, and strikingly beautiful. Jaime Ruiz Otis is unique in that his inspiration to use discarded and recycled materials grew from his own employment at a maquiladora along the Tijuana border. Ruiz Otis has been referred to as an environmental artist, a border artist, a minimalist, and a neo-muralist. I am questioning the border through four works of art by Jaime Ruiz Otis because I believe this is an important topic for those of us living on either side, and the answer is so different for the types of people who share this region. In addition, I am exploring the concept of identity for the people who live in Tijuana, primarily those who migrate to the region to seek employment in maquiladoras, with or without the intention of traveling north to the U.S. I am also exploring the ways the arts and culture of Tijuana continue to define an identity of the city, as well as the industrialization of the border region, and the subsequent environmental and social degradation on Tijuana.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

ABSTRACT ...... v

LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... ix

CHAPTER

1 A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE & ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS ...... 1

A Personal Perspective ...... 1

Construction of this Work ...... 8

Key Concepts ...... 8

Identity ...... 8

Maquiladora Sector ...... 10

Borders ...... 11

Organization of Analysis and Essential Questions ...... 12

2 INTRODUCTION & REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...... 15

Jaime Ruiz Otis and Tijuana as a Paradox ...... 15

Review of Literature ...... 18

People of the Maquiladora Industry in Tijuana: Shaping Identity ...... 18

Tijuana: Global City of Industry and Culture ...... 21

Jaime Ruiz Otis: One Man’s Trash is Another’s Treasure ...... 25

3 JAIME RUIZ OTIS AND THE PEOPLE OF THE MAQUILADORA SECTOR IN TIJUANA ...... 29

People of Tijuana: Faces of the Maquiladoras ...... 32

vii

Registros de Labor/Trademarks (2004) ...... 35

4 JAIME RUIZ OTIS RESPONDS TO TIJUANA AS A GLOBAL CITY OF CULTURE AND INDUSTRY ...... 44

Tijuana’s Cultural Identity ...... 47

Maquiladoras and the Globalization of Tijuana ...... 49

Introfotosensiproyecto (2005) ...... 52

Tapete Radial (Radial Rug) (2001)...... 58

5 THE FUTURE FOR JAIME RUIZ OTIS AND TIJUANA; CONCLUDING REMARKS ...... 64

Trade Marks (2008) ...... 64

Jaime Ruiz Otis and His Accomplishments ...... 70

The Shared Future for Jaime Ruiz Otis and Tijuana ...... 72

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 76

APPENDIX ACCOMPLISHMENTS ...... 81

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

PAGE

Figure 1. Jaime Ruiz Otis in a recycling dump...... 30

Figure 2. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, image 10, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats..37

Figure 3. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, image 6, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats...... 38

Figure 4. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, image 4, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats...... 40

Figure 5. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, three paneled piece, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats...... 42

Figure 6. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, five paneled piece, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats...... 43

Figure 7. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Introfotosensiproyecto (view 1), 2005. Television screens, blinking bulbs, motion sensors...... 53

Figure 8. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Introfotosensiproyecto (view 2), 2005. Television screens, blinking bulbs, motion sensors...... 55

Figure 9. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Introfotosensiproyecto (detail), 2005. Television screens, blinking bulbs, motion sensors...... 57

Figure 10. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Tapete Radial (Radial Rug), 2001, exhibited in 2006 for TRANSactions. Steel-belted tires, plastic zip-ties. 77 inches in diameter...... 59

Figure 11. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Trade Marks, 2008. Paint, stickers, plastic tubing and light...... 65

Figure 12. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Trade Marks (detail), 2008. Paint, stickers, plastic tubing and light...... 67

Figure 13. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Trade Marks exhibition (view 1), 2008. Paint, stickers, plastic tubing and light...... 69

Figure 14. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Trade Marks exhibition (view 2), 2008. Paint, stickers, plastic tubing and light...... 69

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am so humbled by the support that I have received throughout this process. There

are no words in any language to describe my gratitude and admiration to my parents. My

mother and stepfather, Carole and David Prewett, provided me with every kind of support

possible, from priceless words of encouragement, endless homemade dinners, to financial

assistance when I took a leave of absence from teaching. My father and stepmother, David

and Mary Lou Flesh, always provided encouragement and allowed me to share my dreams

with them about the infinite possibilities in the saving nature of art.

Thank you to Nancy Deffebach, my thesis advisor and mentor: I am so inspired by

you. I believe your passion for the art of Latin America to be limitless, and your desire to

teach your students and share your passion with us is remarkable. You are a role model for

me because you always do the right thing, taking the utmost care that the many artists and

styles of art within Latin America are shared accurately and with compassion. Thank you so

much for being such a constant source of inspiration for me. You have made this experience

absolutely unforgettable. Thank you Norma Iglesias, my second committee member, for

teaching me the importance of combining academia with art and being actively involved in

the arts community in Tijuana. Thank you for helping me with that initial connection to

Jaime Ruiz Otis, and for practicing a life that balances intellect with emotion, recognizing

you need one in order to achieve the other. Thank you to Norma Ojeda, my third committee member, for providing such compassionate expertise on very delicate issues in Tijuana and

the border region and for encouraging me, my first semester of graduate school, to encourage

my students at Hoover High School to continue to share their very important stories. Thank

you to Paul Ganster at the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias, for the

opportunity to learn a different aspect of border studies, for encouraging me to be a graduate

student first, and for giving me the space and time to write my thesis. Thank you to Ramona

Pérez, for providing a spirit of enthusiasm and compassionate leadership in the Latin

American Studies department. Thank you James Gerber for your assistance and expertise,

not only in the U.S.-Mexico border region, but your ability to see the big picture with your

students as you remind us to keep moving towards completion. Thank you Catherine

Gleason for your kindness and your constant enthusiasm and interest in my project and

progress; I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to be a part of the SDSU Downtown

Gallery, a really exciting space for San Diego State representation.

Thank you to Freerk Boedeltje, who listened as I talked myself out of and back in to the writing process. It’s been invaluable to have someone with whom to talk through the

“next steps.” Thank you to Prisca Bermúdez for introducing me to Valeska Soares in Nancy

Deffebach’s class, and the amazing project Soares completed for inSITE’01 I refer to in my

thesis. Thank you to Becca Ansert, you have been constant in reminding me that I can do

this, because I want to do it. Thank you to Pastor Rick Schowalter for creating the connection between us and Siempre Para Los Niños in Tijuana. This orphanage, Siempre

Para Los Niños, to whom I will always give my whole heart, is home to all of us and was the door I opened into Tijuana, straight into the heart of the city. Thank you to the Hoover High

School community for the unbreakable support and encouragement – from my colleagues, admin and students – even when that meant taking a leave of absence in order to complete this project. The students of Hoover inspire me to continue the fight for transparency and

equality, on both sides of the border, and remind me to listen to people’s stories, for we

already have the answers.

I am also thankful for Luis Ituarte, Julio Orozco and Gerardo Yepiz (Acamonchi Art)

for continuing to fuel my passion for the arts in Tijuana and San Diego (respectively). Thank

you to Marcos Ramírez “ERRE” for first introducing me to the complexity of our region through the arts. Thank you to Arturo Rodríguez and La Caja Galería in Tijuana, not only for supporting the work of Jaime Ruiz Otis, but for allowing me to tour the impressive gallery space. It is an inspiring place with a profound impact on our region.

Mostly, I thank the artist, Jaime Ruiz Otis and his city, Tijuana. I am thankful to

Jaime Ruiz Otis for creating art that asks serious questions regarding our humanity, our understanding of community, our commitment to others, and our responsibility to the environment. I am excited for his future, and for the future of Tijuana, a place that can never truly be held by boundaries, and thus relies on the passions and dreams of the people who love this region to constantly share a part of the city’s soul, when they are lucky enough to find it.

CHAPTER 1

A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE & ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE We run parallel along the fence, Jaime Ruiz Otis and I. Both children in the 1980s, both existing, surviving and shaping our stories within miles from one another, though I had more in common with a child across the U.S. than with this boy a moment – and yet an entire world – away. Jaime Ruiz Otis creates because he must, his actions are raw, vulnerable and haunting. How he creates this otherwise trash into something exquisite, beautiful. He does not remove the aspect of trash – he is not interested in trickery or pulling wool over our eyes – instead he manipulates both viewer and object, caressing both into a personal relationship with the other. His art is intimate, I feel the ragged effects of my surroundings, my upbringing, my nation’s addiction to stuff, and I am uncomfortable. I am in this work of art. My decisions, my judgments. So are you. I own this responsibility. So do you. 1 -- Elizabeth Flesh, personal journal entry, March 20, 2007

My initial introduction to Jaime Ruiz Otis, artist and Tijuana resident, was in 2007, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla location, for TRANSactions:

Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, an exhibition featuring 48 painters, sculptors, photographers, videographers and conceptual artists from Latin America. Jaime Ruiz Otis contributed Tapete Radial (Radial Rug) (2001), made from discarded tires and zip-ties, resulting in a handcrafted rug. Fixated is an understatement: I was transformed. Among all the fascinating works of art I saw that day in the museum, it was this piece that made me stop. I walked away thinking of the inequality between the United States and Mexico, especially at the border regions, and the ways in which we use the region more as an opportunity for greater economic gain. I had to laugh out loud at the irony in the artist’s

1 This was my personal journal response upon seeing Jaime Ruiz Otis’s Tapete Radial (Radial Rug) (2001) at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla location in 2007.

message: the juxtaposition of discarded tires placed in a museum that is spectacularly

beautiful, in the corner of a room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Pacific

Ocean, in a museum located in one of the wealthiest communities in the country. It seemed

to me that Ruiz Otis was providing a rather explicit commentary on this very asymmetrical

and unbalanced relationship between the United States and Mexico, San Diego and Tijuana.

The question arose, as perhaps it has time and time again: Where do I fit in with this art

work? I am a border resident – literally and figuratively since birth – thus I exist in this

asymmetry, and a part of my identity has been shaped by it, in the same way all border

residents have been inherently shaped by their social, geographical and political

surroundings. Who am I in this space and as a result of this space? And why does the art of

Jaime Ruiz Otis trigger an emotional and cognitive conversation about my border identity?

Tijuana. It always brings me back. This city. It’s like a call from home and I am the prodigal daughter. I return because I have to. I return because it asks me to come home, or perhaps I stand here, on this side, “the other side,” and I look to it, and it beckons me.

My heart is broken and yet I am a spring, full of life.

Maybe this is the scar Anzaldúa describes. Maybe this is because I have existed along this border my entire life. Maybe because I didn’t realize this simple and honest reality until I had wandered other lands and crossed other borders, not realizing I have my own experience to understand, to share, to journey.

Maybe this is why this project is so important to me. Maybe I needed a venue in which to write down these rattlings in the brain. Maybe I needed a place to breathe, to become vulnerable, and to say it out loud – in the very permanent way words exist: I feel like I don’t belong in my own skin and that this experience is so much more than educational and intellectual. That this journey is emotional, spiritual, cleansing, purifying – that I need this, that all borderlanders need this. This heightened experience, this space in which there is freedom to stare, snap pictures and reflect, reflect, reflect. Heal.2

2 Elizabeth Flesh, personal journal entry, February 16, 2010. This was written as part of a personal journaling project for Norma Iglesias’s class, CCS 595, U.S.-Mexico Field Border Experience.

I am a San Diego native. We are few and far between; people come to San Diego because of the endless sunshine and relaxed California attitudes. When in San Diego, one sees billboard advertisements, commercials, and all other forms of media directing one’s attention at the never ending sunny landscape. Mentioned are the numerous beaches with surf spots abounding, the rich cultural heritage of Balboa Park and the plethora of museums and activities for people of all ages. We have the “World Famous” Zoo and Wild Animal

Park, Sea World and the Birch Aquarium, La Jolla and Coronado, where one can rub elbows with some of the wealthiest people in the country. We are, approximately, two hours to the mountains, two hours to the desert, and, always, fifteen minutes to the ocean. People can experience the “authentic” Mexican-American history in Old Town, where women make flour tortillas while you wait for your table in a colorful patio with your over-sized margarita.

Dotted along the landscape are missions built by the first of many Spanish explorers so many

centuries ago. And, while street names in the most affluent of communities are mostly in

Spanish: Via de la Valle, El Camino Real, and Camino del Río, the true and authentic

Mexican-American, Chicano/a and/or new immigrant communities are maintained in

pockets, isolated from the city San Diego projects to the tourism industry.3

The sparkling, sunny-pictured San Diego, aptly named “America’s Finest City” is

home to me, and this is the San Diego I grew up in. Rarely mentioned in my household was

the expanse of land and multitude of cultures and people existing just south, within the

boundary of San Diego, as well as across the fence to our next-door neighbors. When

3 I am referring to communities such as City Heights, Sherman Heights, Logan Heights, etc. Communities rich in cultural history and diversity but not necessarily encouraged and supported by the greater San Diego community, and certainly not showcased in tourism information: “Welcome to Our New Website,” San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, accessed June 4, 2012, http://www.sandiego.org/.

Tijuana was mentioned, it was always filled in subtext with fear of the unknown. We were not to go across the border, under any circumstances, ever. There were people in my high school who would venture across to Avenida Revolución, the strip in Tijuana that panders to tourists, under-aged adolescents and college students, calling them with cheap drinks at all- night clubs on the weekends, but not in my circle of friends. We heard the stories, knew the

“type” of girls who crossed into Tijuana, and the outcomes of the nights spent in the clubs and bars. Tijuana was never a part of my existence – not until I had graduated from college and had moved back to Southern California. At that point, I was not interested in the nightlife of Tijuana, but the social and cultural landscape. I wanted to meet the people.

I had an opportunity to begin volunteering at an orphanage in Tijuana, and ultimately worked with the orphanage for three years, crossing the border on the weekends. When I decided to return to school to obtain my teaching credential and was placed in a high school in an extremely diverse community (an isolated pocket as mentioned above), I met students who had recently emigrated from Mexico and another piece of my identity began to form.

The more I traveled to Tijuana, the less daunting and different it became. The more conversations I had with the children at the orphanage and the students in the classroom in

San Diego, the more I realized the importance of understanding my neighbors, my region. I help shape the cultural climate of San Diego, and I need to understand the border, Tijuana, and how I fit into this space. This is not only where I find my identity, but where I define it.

My first reaction to Tijuana occurred before I even arrived to San Ysidro. As I roared down Interstate 805 at 90mph, keeping one eye on the clock and one on my rearview mirror silently praying for no cops, I realized I am never on time to cross the border. As I raced closer to my parking lot destination, a place where the employees speak to me in Spanish because that’s who they think I am, or maybe because that’s who they are - either way, I appreciate it – I reflect on this heightened sense of awareness that I am always late to cross because I don’t believe the border is as far from me geographically as it is. It is here, in this

inaccuracy of geographical distance that I believe I exist emotionally. I believe I am much closer than I actually am to Tijuana. And I believe this expands beyond a physical/geographical construct. Because my heart is right there. On which side? On the fence?4

When looking into master’s programs, Latin American Studies seemed an obvious fit.

In my first semester as a graduate student, and simply because of an inherent interest in the arts, I registered for an Art of Latin America class. Ultimately, this class changed my trajectory, opening my eyes and heart to a passion I had not yet uncovered.

Jaime Ruiz Otis’s work Tapete Radial (Radial Rug) (2001), has stayed with me indefinitely. I always returned to his perspective of the border, his commentary on the bi- national situation between the U.S. and Mexico, and his response to the ever-growing maquiladora industry. I had the opportunity to visit a maquiladora in Tecate, and while my

visit was not during operation hours, I could see the ways in which Jaime Ruiz Otis used his own experiences working in a maquiladora, and the stories of his co-workers in the creation of his work.

As I have conducted research on Jaime Ruiz Otis and come to better understand his message and use of materials, I continually return to the unmistakable way we are linked to each other because of the border fence. I have been reminded of the crucial impact of idenitity, as we share a common denominator: the border fence; however, our paths on either side of the fence, minimal distance geographically, could not have had a more different story.

Jaime Ruiz Otis was born in 1976 in Mexicali. I was born in 1978 in San Diego. We both were coming of age in 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was

4 Elizabeth Flesh, personal journal entry, February 16, 2010. This was written as part of a personal journaling project for Norma Iglesias’s class, CCS 595, U.S.-Mexico Field Border Experience.

6 signed into law.5 At that point, Jaime Ruiz Otis was living in Tecate and working in a maquiladora. I was living in San Diego, attending high school, complete with dance rehearsals and drama productions. I knew of NAFTA because of my history classes, but like most teenagers in my community, we had no idea the impact this agreement placed on the three nations involved, and the ways in which our nation and our relationship with Mexico was affected. We especially had no idea how the Mexican border region, where most of the industrialized production industry (maquiladoras) was developing. While I was worrying about very typical high school things, Ruiz Otis was working at a maquiladora and watching the landscape of his life and community change before his eyes. It is important to note here that I am not generalizing my experience and the experience of Jaime Ruiz Otis as what is

“normal” on this side or that side of the U.S.-Mexico border. I know there are many young people in Tijuana, and the border region, who grew up with a childhood very similar to mine, and that not all people in San Diego have or had a seemingly carefree teenage experience. I cannot stress enough that I am speaking directly to, and about, the great similarities and the great disparities Jaime Ruiz Otis and I share. This is asymmetry highlighted and imbalance exposed.

It continues to surprise me that our region can exist in such strange imbalance, and yet we do, we function in this glaring asymmetry. In an interview with Jaime Ruiz Otis, he was asked about the border, to which he responded, “It’s a scar across mountains, it has killed the landscape.” 6 I believe that in addition to the border killing the environmental

5 For further information on NAFTA, visit the official U.S. government website for NAFTA here: “North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),” United States Trade Representative, accessed June 4, 2012, http://www.ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/north-american-free-trade-agreement-nafta. 6 Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010.

landscape, the fence has killed the social landscape. I am reminded of Gloria Anzaldúa when

she says, “The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates

against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of

two worlds merging to form a third country – a border culture.”7

A friend of mine was explaining Western construction of time versus that of Eastern. She reiterated something she had heard in which the definition was highlighted by the story of a person standing stationary along a river. From the Western perspective, we stand watching the river flow in a direction, and we think of the water behind us as our past, the water directly next to us, as fleeting as it is, represents our present, and the water head suggests our future, we cannot see where it will go. However, in contrast, Eastern perspective describes the water ahead of us as our past; we have already seen and know this water. The water directly next to us is that of the present (in fact our only similarity), and the water behind us is our future, as we cannot yet see it and thus do not know it. This is the symbolic border we exist in. We don’t yet know in what direction our actions will take us. All we have is our past, and in what direction does that run?8

When Jaime Ruiz Otis was asked if he thought of himself as a border artist, he

replied, “Yes, totally. I have lived along three borders [Mexicali, Tecate and Tijuana]. They

are always in my life, I’m always along the border.”9 What an expression of identity, as his

identity is so closely aligned with his experience along the border. In addition, his work at

the maquiladora only continues this creation of experience and thus resulting in his art.

When I asked him how the border region affects art, he answered directly with the effects of

NAFTA on this region. He knows that if NAFTA had not been signed, maquiladoras, and much of the industrialization industry in Tijuana would look different, and therefore, his art

7 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 25. Una herida abierta is translated from the Spanish to: an open wound. 8 Elizabeth Flesh, personal journal entry, March 20, 2011. 9 Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010

would look very different. Most importantly, he noted, “You are influenced by the space you

are living in…the border.” 10

CONSTRUCTION OF THIS WORK This section includes a detailing of the structure of the thesis and a format for analysis

of each work of art.

Key Concepts The key concepts provide the reader with appropriate background information

pertinent to understanding this manuscript and the works of Jaime Ruiz Otis.

IDENTITY Identity is a complex and multi-layered idea. Spanning across every discipline,

identity defines and redefines – arguably – everything. Upon seeking to understand identity,

all of humanity can more or less begin with the question: “Who are you?” Much like the

caterpillar asking Alice, triggering a spiral of events and thoughts in order for her to answer

that question, each of us are faced with the same question. This question is multi-layered in

and of itself, for the question can be addressed to an individual as well as a group – the

personal and social constructions of identity. Moreover, the question can be asked

reflexively, as in, “Who am I?” and “Who are we?”11

Identity can be defined in three different levels: individual, relational and collective.

An individual identity looks within, in part defining personal values, beliefs, goals,

10 Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010 11 Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles, “Introduction: Toward an Integrative View of Identity,” in Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, eds. Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles (New York: Springer, 2011), 2.

behaviors, and self-esteem. Relational identity establishes the self with others, creating a

social construction. The collective identity defines the social groups individuals are

members of. In turn, the individuals feed the group’s feelings, beliefs, and attitudes that

result.12

Psychologists Koen Luyckx, Seth J. Schwartz and Vivian L. Vignoles suggest that,

Viewed through the lens of an individual person, identity consists of the confluence of the person’s self-chosen or ascribed commitments, personal characteristics, and beliefs about herself; roles and positions in relation to significant others; and her membership in social groups and categories (including both her status within the group and the group’s status within the larger context); as well as her identification with treasured material possessions and her sense of where she belongs in geographical space.13

Finally, they state that these multiple aspects of identity are not independent of each other –

rather, they are interwoven and in constant relation with each other. Thus, identities are

organically personal and social, in both content and in the ways they are formed, and the

ways they evolve over time and through experiences.

Within this construction of identity lies the essential need to develop and understand

individual identity as well as the collective. The same is understood for a city and a nation.

Identity transcends to become a cultural, social and personal necessity. The multi-layered

construction of self-identity is similar in complexity to the identity of a region, especially one

as complex as the Tijuana border region. In defining social identity and the identity of a region, priority should fall to the people who live within the region and can thus personally speak to the identity of the place. However, it is also important to consider the ways in

12 Ibid., 3. 13 Ibid., 4.

which the region affects those not local or native to it. Each voice is valuable and influences

all parties involved in the attempt to create and define identity.

MAQUILADORA SECTOR Maquiladoras are foreign-owned (majority U.S. owned) assembly plants that line the border region (and throughout Mexico) and employ several hundreds of thousands of people, paying them low wages. The history of maquiladoras in Tijuana is extensive, a brief historical account is provided throughout this manuscript, especially as it pertains to the art of Jaime Ruiz Otis. Along with the rapid growth of the maquiladora sector along the U.S.-

Mexico border region since the 1960s, come several concerns regarding environmental

impact, appropriate toxic waste removal, employee rights and safe working conditions, to

name a few. The maquiladora industry forever changed the landscape of the border region.

In Tijuana, where the majority of the assembly plants are located, the city has experienced tremendous population growth due to migration north in search of employment in the maquiladora industry. Not only has this changed the social and cultural landscape of the region, but it has severely affected the physical environment. In addition to effects on the environment due to population growth, the assembly plants themselves have been major factors in the region’s environmental issues. Despite laws enacted to regulate waste and toxic residue, Tijuana is the recipient of great environmental strain. Lawrence A. Herzog states, “By its very nature, a maquila is a leased space that performs a function for a company located thousands of miles away. This inherently opens the possibility for environmental insensitivity.”14 The maquiladora sector is an important factor in the

14 Lawrence A. Herzog, “Rethinking Urban Ecologies: Cultural Barriers to Sustainable Development?,” in Equity and Sustainable Development: Reflections From the U.S.-Mexico Border, eds. Jane Clough-Riquelme

11 social/cultural identity of Tijuana, and a strong example of the existing asymmetry of the

U.S.-Mexico border region.

BORDERS The U.S.-Mexico border plays a significant role for each person residing within and along the border region. All border residents have a relationship with the border, be it conscious or subconscious. It is important to note that the border is both literal and figurative

– it exists as a physical barrier or signifier between nations (as a fence), and it exists as a metaphor – a constant reminder of the other, the unknown, promoting and capitalizing on concepts such as fear and isolation. The border between San Diego and Tijuana is mentioned frequently in this manuscript. It is essential to remember that the border means something different for residents in San Diego and Tijuana. In Tijuana, the border is a common – daily

– experience in the lives of the residents. There is no way to overlook the border; it is a harsh physical aspect of the landscape and a deeply emotional wound for the people whose lives brush against it daily. This is especially apparent in a region like San Diego and

Tijuana, a metropolis home to nearly 5 million people. Tijuana is tied to the U.S. through bi- national economic endeavors, and it is linked to Mexico with strong nationalist roots, thus

Tijuana has been established as a dual identity, with the border fence as the ever-present backdrop.15

There is a shared concern and tension between border residents on either side of the

San Diego-Tijuana border fence, as the region becomes increasingly militarized while respect

and Nora Bringas Rábago (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego, 2006), 50. 15 Ibid., 44.

for the environment and shared aspects of culture and identity flounder.16 The irony of an

increasingly militarized border region is that while the San Diego-Tijuana region continues to

grow, the economic ties also continue to develop. In 2006, the 5 million inhabitants of the

San Diego-Tijuana region shared an economy with US $6 billion in annual exports and US

$8 billion in cross-border trade.17 Yet, the wall is all but a fortress and U.S. operations to

strengthen control of who/what crosses has expanded. Understandably and as a result, this

region is complex and confusing, a perfect canvas for a rich arts and culture movement.

Organization of Analysis and Essential Questions My primary focus of this thesis is the art of Jaime Ruiz Otis. Through his art, and

my analysis of the four works I selected, my hope is that the reader not only understands

Ruiz Otis’s process in creation, and even captures a brief glimpse of the artist, but also begins to understand the complexity of the world Ruiz Otis is a part of. Tijuana is home to Jaime

Ruiz Otis, and he continually shares his version of the city in his art. While this text may combine aspects of social sciences and art analysis, please note my intention is to show and explain the art of Jaime Ruiz Otis, capturing elements and the nature of certain aspects of

Tijuana.

This thesis will be organized using four works by Jaime Ruiz Otis to reflect different aspects of his search for identity in Tijuana: as an industrialized space, a cultural and artistic space, and a global space. Chapter one includes my personal path to this topic and the

16 I would like to clarify that nearly all residents in Tijuana share these concerns, while not every resident of San Diego is aware and/or concerned with the strengthening of military operations in the region. I refer here to residents of San Diego who are actively involved in the complexities of this region. This is but one of many aspects of asymmetry along the U.S.-Mexico border region. 17 Herzog, “Rethinking Urban Ecologies,” 45.

organization of the thesis. Chapter two is an introduction and a review of the most relevant

literature. Chapter three looks at Jaime Ruiz Otis’s Registros de labor/Trademarks (2004) as

a reflection of the identity of workers in Tijuana’s maquiladoras. Chapter four describes

Ruiz Otis’s Introfotosensiproyecto (2005) and Tapete Radial (Radial Rug) (2001) and identifies the current prolific arts and culture movement as well as the maquiladora industry and the political, social and environmental effects on Tijuana. Chapter five concludes the thesis with a description of Trade Marks (2008) as it compares to a projected future of

Tijuana, a look at Jaime Ruiz Otis’s active presence in Tijuana, Mexico City and abroad, and how the reception of his works shapes conversations about Tijuana, maquiladoras, and the border.

As the focus of this manuscript is to highlight selected works within the collection

Jaime Ruiz Otis continues to develop, the core focus remains on the importance of understanding the artist. My belief is that Jaime Ruiz Otis and I have both been on the journey of discovering identity. His journey has been documented through his art, and my search has been defined – in part – through exposure to his art. I provide the reader with a description of each work, including relevant details regarding the title. I explain the aesthetic and the narrative (what was Jaime Ruiz Otis’ story in this moment of creation) as well as the political and sociological aspects, paying attention to the production of irony in his works and the continued examples he creates of the asymmetry of the U.S.-Mexican border region.

As I interpret his works through this form of formal analysis, my hope is that the reader continues to find moments of his/her own self-reflection, asking: What do we do with the art of Jaime Ruiz Otis? Now that we have seen it, we must deal with the experience we have

14 undergone. How will we continue to interpret what we have learned into a larger social framework?

We are all a part of the asymmetric functionality that exists at the San Diego/Tijuana border, as well as the U.S.-Mexico border in its entirety. In what ways can the art of Jaime

Ruiz Otis affect our response to this space?

CHAPTER 2

INTRODUCTION & REVIEW OF LITERATURE

JAIME RUIZ OTIS AND TIJUANA AS A PARADOX The San Diego/Tijuana region is unlike any other border region in the world: two

sprawling urban cities, lying side by side, sharing in land, trade, commerce, labor, and

families. This space is defined by a complex relationship that does not socially identify with

the same history, language, religion, or identity – yet an electrifying bond is present.

Tijuana, as a cultural and artistic space, is flourishing. People worldwide are attempting to

understand, interpret and internalize the many diverse elements that make up this unique

geographic and cultural region. In 2006, Tijuana was noted as a “cultural hotbed,”18

attracting global attention to its exhibitions that question and comment on the conflicts that

are part of the day-to-day existence for Tijuanenses as border residents. Tijuana is a paradox:

on the one hand, the city is the recipient of negative attention focused on drug cartel

operations, prostitution, corrupt government and poverty. On the other hand, the city

expresses a distinct, vibrant and eclectic artistic society that seemingly much of the world

hungers for.

The art being created in Tijuana appears to mirror the reality within this existing

hybrid culture. Tijuana art appears to be created by the heterogeneity of the city, therefore

there is no monolithic expression, but instead a reflection of daily Tijuana life, that plays into

18 Elisabeth Malkin, “Tijuana Transforms into a Cultural Hotbed,” New York Times, June 8, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/arts/design/08bord.html?.

family, gender roles, and relationships, including bi-national relationships with San Diego.

The artists in Tijuana have placed their reality on a new level, giving the people of Tijuana a

different lens to look through. Surprisingly, they do not consider themselves “political

artists.” They consider themselves to be realists, documenting an authentic, political and

cultural urban landscape.19 With this understanding the question is asked: are these artists

trying to take control of an environment out of control? Prolific writer and performance

artist, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, accounts his impression of the subtle chaos instilled by the

San Diego/Tijuana border region, stating,

The Tijuana – San Diego border is ‘the gap between two worlds,’ a space that allows for literal crossing, spiritual passage, struggle, and transgression. The border space holds a permanent potential for crossing or not crossing; it forms a pervasive presence in border-dwellers’ lives. It is where alternative mental cartographies must continuously be recast and contested.20

It is natural to assume that out of such an intense and utterly strange geographic and cultural

region, artists would emerge as translators and documenters, describing their city through the

eyes of painting, photography, digital media and the plastic arts.

It is amongst this artistic energy that Jaime Ruiz Otis (b. 1976, Mexicali) emerged on

the Tijuana art scene at the turn of the twenty-first century. A native to the border and

entering adulthood at the time of the transition to a post-NAFTA world of globalization and

import/exportation, Ruiz Otis “found” his art among the industrial trash and recycling

dumpsters in the many maquiladoras scattered throughout the Tijuana border region. Taking

this discarded material, Jaime Ruiz Otis turns this “trash” into works of art that highlight and

19 These are the author’s observations documented during research of artists and institutions in Tijuana, fall 2008 for the course LATAM 601. 20 Guillermo Gómez-Peña as quoted by Roger Rouse, “Mexican Migration and the Space of Postmodernism,” in Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, ed. David Gutiérrez (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1996), 248.

explain an important geographic and cultural region. He creates minimalist installations,

referring to the installations as “primitive,”21 that address the economic and cultural reality

unique to border life with a twist of irony as what was once cast off and discarded is now

considered symbolic, artistically significant, and strikingly beautiful. Ruiz Otis stands as an

example of how art addresses the effects of Tijuana’s commercial integration with the United

States on the city and its people.

Jaime Ruiz Otis is not alone in his creation of recycled materials, in fact as Elisabeth

Malkin suggests, he is reflecting the general process of Tijuana’s inhabitants:

Tijuana’s shantytowns perch on mountains of old tires; those wishing to leave build temporary shelters from cast-off garage doors and factory pallets, and mechanics construct tin men from discarded mufflers to advertise their talent. So many of the artists explore Tijuana’s identity as a recycling point for American discards.22

According to Rachel Teagle, curator for the Museum of Contemporary Art San

Diego’s Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y diseño desde Tijuana exhibition in 2006, “the artists of Tijuana claim that the city affects

what they produce. They intentionally engage the city in their art, either directly or by

questioning what it means to live and work under the influence of Tijuana’s pressures and

possibilities.”23 The “do it yourself” spirit is palpable among Tijuana artists, as they

creatively find ways to make their work happen and be seen, a result of not having any major

art schools or institutions until recently (Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT) opened to the

public in 1982). Teagle accounts, “In a city without long-standing arts institutions, lacking in

21 Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010. 22 Malkin, “Tijuana Transforms.” 23 Rachel Teagle, “Art and the Logic of the City,” in Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana, ed. Rachel Teagle (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 106.

commercial support, and with only a very recent culture of collecting, artists must figure out

how to make ‘it’ happen on their own.”24

Jaime Ruiz Otis is unique in that his inspiration to use discarded and recycled

materials grew from his own employment at a maquiladora along the Tijuana border, and

thus his art reflects the stories of those he has met and interacted with, as well as his

confrontation with globalization and a post-NAFTA world, as it affects the identity of the

people and Tijuana, both psychologically and environmentally. Jaime Ruiz Otis began

working in maquiladoras when he was eighteen years old.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE The review of literature outlines the most relevant information available as it pertains

to this thesis. The review of literature is organized by sections: identity, Tijuana and Jaime

Ruiz Otis.

People of the Maquiladora Industry in Tijuana: Shaping Identity The culture and people of Tijuana are just like the city itself: constantly shifting. The

body of work available – the number of theorists, scholars, authors and journalists who have

documented the process and pursuit of identity among the people of Tijuana – is large and

broad. In my pursuit to find published literature that documents the development of personal

identity as it relates to the art work of Jaime Ruiz Otis, I found texts that describe an identity

that is compromised and malleable, as often times the people associated with maquiladoras

are on a journey, and Tijuana is but a point along that journey. Also, I sought out work

depicting an identity that seemed to be lost for a time, and the inevitable struggle to reclaim

24 Ibid., 108.

and/or meet for the first time an identity that reflects an authentic person, and honors that person’s voice. The maquiladora industry brought many people north to the border region in

search of employment, thus creating a diverse landscape of people, cultures, languages, and

familiarities. With this migration to a new region, individual and familial identities would

naturally need to evolve and shift, a constant compromise.

Identity is both broadly universal, and uncomfortably personal. While attempting to

understand and delicately document the process of compromising identity when necessity

calls one away from their established roots and homeland, I found Gloria Anzaldúa’s

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, published in 1987. Gloria Anzaldúa explores

identity as a Chicana growing up in rural Texas, and yet speaks so universally that I believe

she gave voice to the identity of all of us who live in a borderland. As Anzaldúa states,

“Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where

people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper

classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy.”25 Anzaldúa describes the fear of finding and adapting personal identity when living in a borderland. Her voice is so intimate it is painful at times, she documents the excruciating process of developing and expanding an identity, saying, “She has this fear that if she digs into herself she won’t find anyone…She has this fear that she won’t find the way back.”26 In my

opinion, this statement makes the process of finding identity, or adapting identity, universal.

It is this statement that makes it possible to understand the journey of the people who arrive

in Tijuana, as they are, as we are, as I am, a people connected to this human experience.

25 Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 19. 26 Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 19.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña wrote Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back in

2000.27 Gómez-Peña understands what it means to be from the outside. He was born and

raised in Mexico City and moved to the U.S. as a young adult. Thus, he was, per society’s

standards, neither completely a Chicano (as defined by the political movement of Mexican-

Americans) nor was he entirely a Mexicano. Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks

Back, is in part personal journal, describing the judgement, racism and bigotry that humans place on each other, and his attempt to overcome – or push through – these negative human elements. It also includes dialogues with journalists as well as monologues and scripts from select performance art pieces he has created that reflect the overall voice of this book. He writes with a passionate voice that screams at the insanity of the border and the asymmetry of the two neighboring nations, while keeping his humor drenched in sarcasm and wit. I find his opinion and his history relevant to my pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the migrants to Tijuana, because he so carefully and yet so explicitly depicts this shared struggle of belonging.

In 2004, Manlio César Correa, Mario Martín Flores and José-Rodolfo Jacobo, graduate student and professors (respectively) of San Diego State University collaborated on a book of poetry and photography that depicts a very personal perspective of growing up alongside the border and what that means to the identities of the people within that region.

The Giving Gaze: an intimate topography of the border/La Mirada pródiga: una topografía

íntima de la frontera expresses the pain and anguish, as well as the constant searching for understanding and reason of border residents. One poem aptly titled Identity states:

27 Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back (London: Routledge, 2000).

We light up any identity Not to curse the dark wandering, As fugitive as the stem And flowering of a flame.28

I see this sentiment repeatedly in the work of Jaime Ruiz Otis, as he searches for a way to highlight the identities of the people working in the maquiladoras, and the people living in

the city of Tijuana: as a means to be recognized as something more than a vacant face, a

toxic waste opportunity, a nameless employee, a stamp on a device or a screen on a

television.

Tijuana: Global City of Industry and Culture As previously noted, the literature available regarding the complexities of the city of

Tijuana is expansive. My focus was seeking material pertaining to the contemporary identity

of the city, including the ways in which the different aspects of Tijuana define identity – specifically the city in relation to the border, the city as a center of globalization through the maquiladora industry and the city as a dynamic and diverse cultural hub. Perhaps Tijuana

expresses an atmosphere that many more urban centers will incorporate as years progress.

This is certain: Tijuana is complex, contradictory and exciting, existing within, but not as a

result of, many avenues of investigation and interpretation. Through these avenues of

investigation and interpretation, it is only natural that artists ask questions and respond, thus

creating an extremely vibrant and artistic culture.

In 1974, Italo Calvino wrote Invisible Cities. I was drawn to this text in regards to

Tijuana because of a site-specific art installation, Picturing Paradise, by Brazilian artist

28 Manlio César Correa, Mario Martín Flores and José-Rodolfo Jacobo, The Giving Gaze: An Intimate Topography of the Border/La mirada pródiga: Una topografía íntima de la frontera (San Diego: LARC Press, 2004), 155.

Valeska Soares for inSITE, the bi-national art project in 2000. The quote from Invisible

Cities she extracted for her installation,29 the way in which she showcased the material and the seamless connection between the text and the city of Tijuana inspired me to seek out the rest of Calvino’s text. Calvino defines the complexity of a city like Tijuana without specifically addressing this region.

Norma Iglesias Prieto’s Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of

Women Workers in Tijuana (1997), is an intimate and detailed portrayal of the maquiladora industry, especially as it pertains to women.30 It is a beautiful and painful collection of women’s stories within the largely U.S. owned factories in Tijuana. Through personal interviews with women who have undergone identity shifts, she provides extensive background knowledge into the maquiladora industry. Because she writes with the perspective of the women she interviewed, as well as her own reaction to spending time in the maquiladoras, there is an authentic voice in her book, as each woman – including Iglesias

29 Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, trans. William Weaver (Orlando: Harcourt, 1974), 53-54. Soares used the following text in her 2000 installation, Picturing Paradise, in which transparent glass was attached to both sides of the U.S./Mexico border fence: The ancients built Valdrada on the shores of a lake, with houses all verandas one above the other, and high streets whose railed parapets look out over the water. Thus the traveler, arriving, sees two cities: one erect above the lake, and the other reflected, upside down. Nothing exists or happens in the one Valdrada that the other Valdrada does not repeat, because the city was so constructed that its every point would be reflected in its mirror, and the Valdrada down in the water contains not only all the flutings and juttings of the facades that rise above the lake, but also the rooms’ interiors with ceilings and floors, the perspective of the halls, the mirrors of the wardrobes. Valdrada’s inhabitants know that each of their actions is, at once, that action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special dignity of images, and this awareness prevents them from succumbing for a single moment to chance and forgetfulness. Even when lovers twist their naked bodies, skin against skin, seeking the position that will give one the most pleasure in the other, even when murderers plunge the knife into the black veins of the neck and more clotted blood pours out the more they press the blade that slips between the tendons, it is not so much their copulating or murdering that matters as the copulating or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the mirror. At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it. Not everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its force when mirrored. The twin cities are not equal, because nothing that exists or happens in Valdrada is symmetrical: every face and gesture is answered, from the mirror, by a face and gesture inverted, point by point. The two Valdradas live for each other, their eyes interlocked; but there is no love between them. 30 Norma Iglesias Prieto, Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana, trans. Michael Stone and Gabrielle Winkler (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997).

Prieto – struggles to determine their identities as employees, mothers, wives and friends within the construction of these mega industries. When considering the works of Jaime Ruiz

Otis through the lenses of Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women

Workers in Tijuana, there seems to be a shared sentiment and ability to understand the realities the maquila employees face.

While Jaime Ruiz Otis and most of his contemporaries did not participate in the inSITE projects, mainly as they are the next generation of an artistic movement in Tijuana, it is important to understand the background of the inSITE movement and what kinds of questions arose out of the exhibitions. Fugitive Sites: inSITE 2000-2001, New Contemporary

Art Projects for San Diego – Tijuana, published in 2002, is a comprehensive catalogue in which each art piece and artist participant is described in detail, along with essays included by a dynamic group of scholars and theorists. In particular, the 2000-2001 inSITE project gathered an abundance of theorists and artists who asked very challenging questions for the

San Diego/Tijuana region at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The inSITE projects provided a global focus on the Tijuana/San Diego region, as artists from around the world were invited to expose their perspectives on the reality of borders and the potential opportunity in transcending borders through a bi-national art exhibition. inSITE provided a valuable platform for conversation regarding the border region through the arts.

Paseo del nortec: This is Tijuana, edited by Juan Claudio Retes and José Manuel

Valenzuela Arce, and published in 2004, is a collection of essays describing the visual and performing arts movement in Tijuana throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century.

So intricately detailed is the description of the city of Tijuana: how it has evolved from a tourist town to a globalized city of industry to a cultural center. This bi-lingual catalogue

provides an understanding of the artist’s plight to document the city he/she lives in. I found

this book useful in my research because each author addresses different aspects of the history

of Tijuana, incorporating the significance of each event and transition of the city towards the

current artistic achievements.

I refer to Fifty Years of Change on the U.S.-Mexico Border: Growth, Development,

and Quality of Life by Joan B. Anderson and James Gerber, published in 2008,31 as a

comprehensive collection of data and an analytical description of the change in Tijuana – and

the entire border region; however, for my research I focused primarily on Tijuana –

throughout recent history. This book documents the rapid growth in the maquiladora

industry, especially when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted

in 1994. It provides background information on the migration trends from Mexico to the border region in order to find employment at a maquila, as well as provide descriptive

material regarding the political and industrial relationship between the United States and

Mexico.

Finally, Norma Iglesias Prieto’s Emergencias: Las artes visuales en Tijuana, los contextos urbanos glo-cales y la creatividad (2008), provides an excellent description of the very present and contemporary Tijuana. Included in this description are the artists – all of whom are contemporaries of Jaime Ruiz Otis (he is documented in this book as well) – and the ways in which the artists interpret Tijuana’s continual evolution. Running parallel with the change and shift of the city is the art movement, providing constant documentation of an ever-evolving socio-cultural geography. Jaime Ruiz Otis’s art is so local, and therefore he is

31 Joan B. Anderson and James Gerber, Fifty Years of Change on the U.S.-Mexico Border: Growth, Development, and Quality of Life (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).

25 a profound example of the voice and identity of Tijuana. He highlights the experience of the local life of Tijuana at a global level.

Jaime Ruiz Otis: One Man’s Trash is Another’s Treasure As a mid-career artist, the body of literature available for Jaime Ruiz Otis is not what it will be in the near future. Having the extraordinary – and knowingly rare – opportunity to engage first hand and in person with three of the four works selected, I believe that while the content of literature is minimal, this in no way exhibits a lack of interest or ability with this exciting artist. In many ways, I am honored to be able to provide as much information as I can on someone so important to the Tijuana border region.

I relied heavily on exhibition catalogues, newspaper and journal reviews of curators, critics and journalists who were able to view and document in the exhibition space, the four pieces I have selected to represent in this thesis. I also found a few interviews conducted with Jaime Ruiz Otis that are profoundly important in understanding his background and thus his voice and identity as an artist.

In 2005, a collection of artists from Tijuana exhibited at ARCOmadrid 2005, an international contemporary art fair in Madrid, Spain. The published catalogue, Tijuana

Sessions (2005), serves as an important document in preserving the works representing

Mexico in the ARCO’05 show, and it gives appropriate voice to each artist, citing their journey in creating within the complex and always changing cultural framework of Tijuana.

The catalogue provide insight into each artist, through brief biographies and explanations of each work, it also includes essays from some of the most important and notable cultural anthropologists and theorists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Two of these contributors are Carlos Monsiváis and Heriberto Yépez – theorists who have spent their

careers building a canon of work that scholars and artists seek out in attempting to define the

complexities of Mexico. Carlos Monsiváis gives an intimate description of the city of

Tijuana, significant because Monsiváis lived in Mexico City, a place so important to the

country of Mexico, and so far away from the city of Tijuana. His voice reflects the voice of the people from Mexico City, attempting to understand why so many people travel to el norte, and how that creates a temporary city. Heriberto Yépez is a professor at the

Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana, in the Escuela de Artes (School of arts).

He is one of the most important theorists in and about Tijuana, and he is also a Tijuana native. When Tijuana Sessions was published, the city of Tijuana was experiencing global attention as a “cultural hotbed,”32 and the artists compiled in this collection serve as the

torch-bearers of such a title. Among them is Jaime Ruiz Otis, represented by his work,

Registros de labor/Trademarks (2004).

Also in 2005, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, downtown location,

awarded its first “stART Up” award to Jaime Ruiz Otis, as an emerging artist from the San

Diego/Tijuana border region. In conjunction with the award, Ruiz Otis installed a collection

of work for the museum’s Cerca Series33 in which local and emerging artists are given an

opportunity to show their work to the community. Ruiz Otis received substantial publicity prior to the show; including an interview with Claire Caraska, a writer for Voice of San

Diego.34 The interview, titled, “Questions for Jaime Ruiz Otis,” was published on May 5,

32 Malkin, “Tijuana Transforms.” 33 Cerca translated from Spanish means “close” or “nearby.” Thus, the Cerca Series reflects local art to the San Diego region. 34 Claire Caraska, “Questions for Jaime Ruiz Otis,” Voice of San Diego, May 5, 2005, http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/people/article_8148411e-4350-54ae-97af-676294182dda.html.

2005 and provides a detailed and personal conversation with then emerging artist Ruiz Otis,

speaking specifically to his work in and influence by the maquiladora industry in Tecate and

Tijuana.

Robert L. Pincus, former art critic for the San Diego Union Tribune, wrote a review

on the eve of Ruiz Otis’s Cerca Series opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art San

Diego, downtown location. Published in the San Diego Union Tribune in June 2005, Pincus

details the contributions of Ruiz Otis to the Cerca Series and further describes the

significance of the stART Up Award, expressing a curiosity and respect for Ruiz Otis and his

choice of materials and medium.35

In 2006, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla location, hosted an

exhibition titled, TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art. Curator

Stephanie Hanor served as editor to the catalogue, also by the same name and published in

2006. The catalogue is complete with several essays by art critics and social theorists,

commenting on the expanse and diversity of art from Latin America and Latino art in the

U.S. Jaime Ruiz Otis, along with several of his colleagues from the Tijuana Sessions

exhibition, is included in Hanor’s essay as an important contributor to the arts and culture of

Tijuana.

Another important exhibition for the art and artists in Tijuana occurred in 2006. The

catalogue (along with the exhibition) was titled, Strange New World: Art and Design from

Tijuana/Extraño nuevo mundo: arte y diseño desde Tijuana, and was published also in 2006.

Included in the exhibition were a collection of artists from Tijuana that spanned the history of

35 Robert L. Pincus, “Recycling Project: ‘Cerca Series: Jaime Ruiz Otis’ Finds the Artist Making Works From Found Objects,” San Diego Union Tribune, June 2, 2005, http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/ 20050602/news_lz1w02art.html.

contemporary art in Tijuana. In compiling the catalogue, Rachel Teagle, lead curator for the exhibition, gathered a dynamic and relevant group of theorists, scholars and critics to provide written insight into the importance of the art in Tijuana and the many reasons why Tijuana was receiving so much notoriety as an artistic hub.

San Diego’s local public radio station, KPBS, hosted an interview with Jaime Ruiz

Otis in September of 2007. Amy Isackson both conducted and published the interview with

Ruiz Otis, just before an exhibition in Mexico City.36 However, instead of discussing the

exhibition and the details of his contributions, Isackson asked Ruiz Otis questions pertaining

to his interest in trash as art. Jaime Ruiz Otis speaks about his concern for the environment

and the ways in which the maquiladoras are not only harming the planet and its resources,

but also the people who work in the factories. The interview further plunges into Ruiz Otis’s

message as an artist, and continues to provide a personal voice essential to understanding the

artist.

36 Amy Isackson, “Tijuana’s Industrial Trash Turned Art,” KPBS Local News, September 28, 2007, http://www.kpbs.org/news/2007/sep/28/tijuanas-industrial-trash-turned-art/.

CHAPTER 3

JAIME RUIZ OTIS AND THE PEOPLE OF THE MAQUILADORA SECTOR IN TIJUANA

Jaime Ruiz Otis was born in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, in 1976 (see Figure

1). His artistic endeavors began in his early adolescence with music, primarily guitar and singing in a rock band, and shortly after transitioned to painting. Ruiz Otis was a self-taught painter, and at the age of fifteen, began attending art classes when he could afford them. He lived in Tecate and worked for a couple who took a liking to him and his passion for the arts.

This couple paid for Ruiz Otis to take art classes when funding was also available to them.37

Ruiz Otis, while having a natural aptitude for painting, did not make a living selling his art.

However, a fascination with the earth, the environment and, as he states, “abandoned things” had taken hold of him as a child and this interest coupled with the lack of resources available to him, introduced him to his current path. He commented, “I have always been fascinated with abandoned things. I was painting and doing these things but I was always working with found objects.”38

In 1999, when Jaime Ruiz Otis was 18 years old, he worked in the department of toxic residue at a maquiladora in Tecate, Baja California, Mexico, in order to pay for and support his work as an artist. Ruiz Otis would spend his lunch hours in the dumpsters of the maquiladora, digging through the discarded materials for supplies he could use for his

37 Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010. 38 Ibid.

Figure 1. Jaime Ruiz Otis in a recycling dump. Source: Teagle, Rachel, ed. Strange New World: Art and Design From Tijuana. La Jolla: San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, 2006.

paintings. He came across such items as paint, printer cartridges and rolls of fax toner among

others.39 Jaime Ruiz Otis stated, “I started finding a lot of materials like used fax toner, metallic foils – gold, bronze, copper, silver – that we used to print text on books and then the rest would be discarded. [The maquiladoras] only use about 5 percent of the material and then they throw away a lot.”40 Ruiz Otis mentioned in an interview with San Diego

39 Luis Alonso Pérez, “Las sobras de Jaime Ruiz Otis,” La Prensa San Diego, June 10, 2005, http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/june10-05/otis.htm. 40 Caraska, “Questions for Jaime Ruiz Otis.”

journalist, Amy Isackson, on KPBS that during his lunch hours, he would “play” in the trash

bins, using the latex gloves they had at his plant and find his needed supplies. As he

continued searching, his interests in art expanded and changed, and he began evolving from

painting, to found materials of prints, collages, sculptures and complete kinetic and interactive installations.41

Jaime Ruiz Otis has been referred to as an environmental artist, a border artist, a

minimalist, and a neo-muralist. However, he does not claim to have one specific message,

stating during his KPBS interview, “There are a lot of things. I’m not working on the

message specific. My work has like a personal things, expression of myself, ideas of

consumerism, ecology, like a little of everything.”42 With these broad interests in mind,

Jaime Ruiz Otis did make one thing clear, he was very affected by his coworkers in the

maquiladora in Tecate. When he moved to Tijuana in 2001, it was their stories he brought

with him.43

Currently, Jaime Ruiz Otis searches for trash from the industrial parks of the

maquiladora industry as well as recycling centers throughout Tijuana. Creation out of

“found objects” is not a new artistic strategy. However, what is interesting and intriguing

about the work of Jaime Ruiz Otis, is that he is creating art from a very politically charged

sectors (maquiladoras and recycling centers) that highlight the asymmetry of the U.S.-

Mexico border region, and that are so specific to the Tijuana/San Diego region in the twenty-

first century. There are significant unknowns when he begins collecting materials: his

41 Isackson, “Tijuana’s Industrial Trash Turned Art.” 42 Ibid. 43 Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010.

projects are dependent on the waste at each site. Therefore, his perspective must be flexible

and open, in order to find the right materials and connect those materials with an idea for a

work of art. When Claire Caraska, reporter with the Voice of San Diego, asked Ruiz Otis

what his creation process was, from trash to paintings, sculptures and installations, he responded,

It depends. I have been with some things for three or four years and nothing happens, but then like that, I get an idea…it’s like good wines, some materials get better with age and some materials, the ideas are in the moment. That’s another thing that is important – that the material itself is the one that gives me the idea. The material is charged with information; the material gives me the idea of what to do with it.44

Because Jaime Ruiz Otis is inspired by the materials he finds, the story and voice in the

material is an authentic response to the situation of the maquiladoras and the workers. Each

found object has a prevalent story, and thus dictates the message conveyed in each work of

art. As art critic Robert L. Pincus commented, “Tomorrow, [Ruiz] Otis’ work just might turn

intricate again. It surely depends on what materials from a Dumpster or recycling center take

hold of him.”45 Jaime Ruiz Otis is in constant shift – depending on what he sees and

admires; much like the border, and especially Tijuana, a city constantly shifting its reality.

PEOPLE OF TIJUANA: FACES OF THE MAQUILADORAS This is my home this thin edge of barbwire. --Gloria Anzaldúa Tijuana is a city of contradictions and change, of impermanence and cultural infusion.

An ever growing and sprawling metropolis, lying side by side to one of the most affluent

44 Caraska, “Questions for Jaime Ruiz Otis.” 45 Pincus, “Recycling Project.”

cities in the United States, and the constant industrial sector that calls people north with employment opportunities and the promise of a better life. People come from everywhere: from the north, people travel south as tourists, in search of exciting nightlife, cheap goods, and easy access to nearly anything. From the south, people travel north in search of employment, opportunity, and in some cases the eventual hope of the American dream.

Thus, Tijuana must cater to all: an engaging night life and a bustling industrial sector; a city constantly searching for people with money to spend and employing those in need of money to earn. Those from the north are free to travel back and forth, passport in hand, as they desire. Those from the south, many times, have sacrificed everything in order to take the great risk of traveling north. Anthropologist Ruth Behar in Translated Woman: Crossing the

Border with Esperanza’s Story, quotes a community member from the small village,

Mexquitic, outside of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, documenting, “People’s horizons face north.

How could they not? Babies are fed Coca-Cola in their bottles, developing early a taste for the sweetness and power of el otro lado…And when times get rough, y el dinero no rinde, you work and work and your money just doesn’t last, there’s always el otro lado, beckoning dollars in every sip of Coke.”46 There is such significance in the people’s perspective as their

ability to access the north in communities like this is always an alternative, and always an

option. While many migrants arrive in Tijuana with the ultimate goal of crossing into the

United States, most often they spend a considerable amount of time in Tijuana, waiting for

and working towards their opportunity to cross.

46 Ruth Behar, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 228-229. El dinero no rinde is translated from the Spanish to, “When there is no money earned.” El otro lado is translated from the Spanish to, “the other side.”

The people who migrate to Tijuana make up a majority of employees in the maquiladora sector. Therefore, because of the migrant draw, the identity of Tijuana is made up of pieces from everywhere. Social anthropologist Norma Iglesias Prieto in Beautiful

Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana states,

Sixty-eight percent of the workers interviewed were migrants. They came principally from other parts of Baja California and from Jalisco, Durango, Sinaloa, Michoacán, Sonora, Nayarit, and Guanajuato. Of these, 73 percent came in search of better living conditions. Some came after the father went to the United States and saved enough money to bring the entire family. Others came with their abandoned or widowed mothers to ‘get ahead in life.’ They had heard it was easier to secure work in Tijuana.47

Often, those traveling north experience a shift in identity. They leave their homes and villages, the only place of any familiarity, to arrive in a city with so many different cultural influences. Usually, these people leave their families – with the hope and assurance of a temporary departure – until they believe the prospect worth the move and can afford to bring their families north. Many of these people seek employment in one of the many maquiladoras in the region, and thus adapt a new identity. Due to the large majority of women employees in the industrial sector, the children are left in the care of each other.

Gloria Anzaldúa comments on this stark reality that leaves an indelible mark on the cultural and personal identities of the families new to Tijuana, and while she is writing in 1987, her sentiments still hold significance and truth. She states,

Working eight to twelve hours a day to wire in backup lights of US autos or solder minuscule wires in TV sets is not the Mexican way. While the women are in the maquiladoras, the children are left on their own. Many roam the street, become part of the cholo gangs. The infusion of the values of the white culture,

47 Iglesias Prieto, Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora, 46.

coupled with the exploitation by that culture, is changing the Mexican way of life.48

The people who migrate from the states in southern Mexico and the countries of

Central America undergo a profound shift in their identities, perhaps even a crisis of identity

as they come to terms with the loss of their land of origin. This process shapes the

surroundings in their new communities. Cristina Rivera Garza writes, in the preface of The

Giving Gaze: An Intimate Topography of the Border/La mirada pródiga: Una topografía

íntima de la frontera, “It is clear that a person is also, and perhaps fundamentally so, the

landscape where they live, the place where they are created and where they recreate

themselves, the place where the everyday becomes minutia, routine. A person is what

surrounds them.”49 Mexico is a very large country with many different cultures, languages,

and belief systems. The contrast between identities within the people who come to Tijuana

in search of employment in the industrial sector further influences and changes the identity of

Tijuana and its people. It is this influx of migration, people, cultures, stories, understandings,

and constant shifts that create the unique space of Tijuana and its inhabitants.

REGISTROS DE LABOR/TRADEMARKS (2004) Jaime Ruiz Otis, a native to the border region (Mexicali), but also an immigrant to

Tijuana, recognized the significance of an ever changing region within the maquiladora

where he was employed. It was the blend of the stories and his observations of the people he

worked with and the working conditions he and his colleagues endured that inspired and

48 Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 32. 49 Cristina Rivera Garza, preface to The Giving Gaze: An Intimate Topography of the Border/La mirada pródiga: Una topografía intima de la frontera, by Manlio César Correa, Mario Martín Flores, and José-Rodolfo Jacobo (San Diego: LARC Press, 2004), xviii.

36 pushed forth his work. Norma Iglesias Prieto provides a clear view of the maquiladora industry:

Maquiladora plants conceal enigmas that cannot always be detected at first glance. The factories are nondescript; the low, dilapidated buildings do not stand out from the rest of the cityscape. But merely to enter is inevitably to be struck by four conditions that invite reflection on the plants’ injurious effects on worker health: the penetrating odor produced by the caustic blend of chemical fumes and vaporized solder; the infernal din of the machines combined with the music of the radios that every worker carries or the Muzak piped in by the firm to raise production; the swirling haze of smoke, fumes, and lint that turns everything gray; and the sea of green, blue, and yellow workers’ smocks, worn to protect the raw materials and to avoid contaminating the product, which must be immaculate in order to pass quality control.50

It is in this explanation where one can see the inspiration for Jaime Ruiz Otis in his experiences with this seemingly impersonal and stark environment. Ruth Estévez states in an article for ArtNexus,

His [Ruiz Otis] artistic endeavor is closely connected to the labor dynamics at the border. The relationship between his practice and that reality in the zone generates, in a singular way, the object of creation of an artist whose approach is inspired by the geopolitical conditions in the area.51

In 2005, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego produced the exhibition,

Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y diseño desde Tijuana. Strange New World was the first in-depth study of the history and development of contemporary art in Tijuana, surveying the thirty-five years of art from

Tijuana, beginning with work from 1974, but focusing on the work from 1994 to the present.52 Jaime Ruiz Otis contributed his work entitled, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, created in 2004, to the exhibition (Figure 2). The fourteen Registros de Labor/Trademarks

50 Iglesias Prieto, Beautiful Flowers, 19. 51 Ruth Estévez, “Jaime Ruiz-Otis: Arroniz arte contemporáneo,” ArtNexus 9, no. 79 (2011): 132. 52 Teagle, “Art and the Logic of the City,” 102.

Figure 2. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, image 10, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats. Source: Ruiz Otis, Jaime. “Registros de labor trademarks.” Jaime Ruiz Otis (blog). May 3, 2012. http://jaimeruizotis. blogspot.com/2010/05/registros-de-labor-trademarks.html.

engravings exhibit another form of industrial degradation. Ruiz Otis found polyurethane

mats that were originally used as cutting boards for fabric, metal, and plastic, thus the

surfaces were repeatedly stamped, marked, and gouged. Ruiz Otis turned these worn out and

dilapidated mats into printing plates. Using black acrylic paint to fill the gouges, and

mimicking the original use of the mats, he stamped the plates onto paper ten times (Figure

3).53 The catalogue for the exhibition Strange New World/Extraño Nuevo Mundo, continues,

53 Jaime Ruiz Otis, "Registros de labor trademarks," Jamie Ruiz Otis (blog), May 3, 2012, http://jaimeruizotis.blogspot.com/2010/05/registros-de-labor-trademarks.html. Originally written in Spanish, “Estas placas de acrílico las he encontrado en diferentes maquiladoras de la región, las utilizan como mesas para cortar diferentes materiales, como telas, plásticos, etc. (en las imágenes, les puse pintura acr’lica [sic] negra a

Figure 3. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, image 6, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats. Source: Ruiz Otis, Jaime. “Registros de labor trademarks.” Jaime Ruiz Otis (blog). May 3, 2012. http://jaimeruizotis.blogspot.com/2010/05/registros-de-labor- trademarks.html.

“He condenses a whole system of automated mass production of consumer goods, from the first imprint of the cutter on the intact board, to the ultimate disposal of the scored mat from where it was salvaged and recast.”54

The results vary from piece to piece. Jaime Ruiz Otis created a “series within a series” as he explored different techniques of applying the paint to the mat that alters the images created with each stamp. Some images within the series have been stamped so many

las placas para apreciar la línea). Estas placas las imprimio de manera tradicional de grabado con la técnica "pinta seca" entintando la placa con tinta negra, repitiendo en proceso diez vecez [sic].” 54 Lucía Sanromán, “Jaime Ruiz Otis,” in Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana, ed. Rachel Teagle, trans. John Farell (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 223.

39 times, the image is thick and geometric. These prints were repeatedly stamped without significantly adjusting their position, thus the patterns are obvious: rectangles, circles, squares, and a combination of the three. There are other images within the series that have been repositioned and therefore almost look three-dimensional.

Jaime Ruiz Otis titles many of his works in both Spanish and English, an interesting characteristic of the region he creates within. Registros de Labor and the English translation

Trademarks potentially signify several aspects. First, the original mats were used to cut different fabrics and textiles, to fit certain objects that ultimately would be sold with the manufacturer’s label – or trademark – on the item. Additionally, Jaime Ruiz Otis could have created a tongue-in-cheek ironic title such as Registros de Labor/Trademarks to further highlight his use of industrial waste as materials, creating his own brand, identity or

“trademark.” As previously mentioned, the bilingual title not only reflects the border region, but in this case, it also reinforces the reality that the two nations are highly involved in the development process. The products assembled in Mexico from U.S. materials in U.S. owned factories, are stamped with the label of the U.S. corporation, then shipped back across the border to the U.S. to be sold. Lastly, there is a significant possibility that Jaime Ruiz Otis gave this series the title of Registros de Labor/Trademarks so as to remind the audience of the human labor involved. Simply put, each stamp reflects another person’s identity.

A recurring theme arises for the viewer among the works of Ruiz Otis, a factor that makes his work so poignant and important. As the viewer observes Registros de

Labor/Trademarks, he/she is taken by the detail and stark contrast of color on the images; however, it is not obviously the manipulation of discarded materials (Figure 4). Instead, one looks on this as invented and created materials by the artist himself. Furthermore the

Figure 4. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, image 4, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats. Source: Ruiz Otis, Jaime. “Registros de labor trademarks.” Jaime Ruiz Otis (blog). May 3, 2012. http://jaimeruizotis.blogspot.com/2010/05/registros- de-labor-trademarks.html.

materials used suggest the surplus of consumerism – the repetition of manufacturing goods,

the wear and waste this causes to natural resources and the environment, and the lack of a

healthy working environment. Tony Osuna of Umélec writes, “These used surfaces, which

were repeatedly stamped, marked, cut, create a grim, industrial art gesture once transferred

onto their inked imprints on paper.”55 In addition, Pierre Restany, theorist and art critic of

55 Tony Osuna, “Strange New World is Coming to a Future Near You,” Ulémec: Contemporary Art and Culture 2 (2007): 71.

New Realism, describes Registros de labor/Trademarks as, “a poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality.”56

Registros de Labor/Trademarks is a highly significant piece for Jaime Ruiz Otis. It is a series he worked on for many years and continues to add to, each time he finds another

discarded cutting mat, he reserves it for another addition to the series. In 2005, during his interview with Claire Caraska of Voice of San Diego, she asked him what was his most favorite dumpster discovery, to which he responded, “There are a lot. They are like my kids

[laughs]. Each one has certain values. [Registros de Labor/Trademarks] is one of my favorite findings. It gets close to the people that work in the maquiladoras, the phenomenon of the work.”57 Not only is Ruiz Otis getting close to the people that work in the

maquiladoras, he is highlighting the conditions these people work under, and the position they represent at their respective factories (Figure 5). In the case of Registros de

Labor/Trademarks, each stamp potentially represents a person, the mark left by him/her, the

mark of people, desire, and necessity. The employees are literally leaving their presence

marked on society. As anonymous as it may be, it suggests that not only are there human

lives currently working at these plants, but this is who they are and what their identity represents. Ruth Estévez states that Ruiz Otis was able to,

Establish more effective ways of collecting these silent – but not blind – witnesses of the capitalist project. Like printed monochromes, the traces of dyes on a piece of fabric or polyethylene sheet, appear to have been created by a delicate lathe. In some cases one could think these supports or printed sheets are actually plans to build futuristic machines or geometrical objects with fortuitous forms. But the moment one understands the origin of these ‘engravings’ it becomes possible to imagine the genesis of the process, since these shadows outlined in black and

56 Pierre Restany as quoted by Sanromán,“Jaime Ruiz Otis,” 223. 57 Caraska, “Questions for Jaime Ruiz Otis.”

Figure 5. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, three paneled piece, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Source: Teagle, Rachel, ed. Strange New World: Art and Design From Tijuana. La Jolla: San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, 2006.

white are like ghosts capable of awaking and reactivating the context they came from, through a gesture as dramatic as it is neutral. This neutrality of the aseptic and repeated object reveals the purpose of the maquiladora, a place where any activity is reduced to bare machinic movements.58

Jaime Ruiz Otis shares the existence of each anonymous employee with each stamp,

repeating the message of the many thousands of people who work in the industry (Figure 6).

Rubén Bonet of Revista Replicante commented on the status of maquiladora employment,

Maquiladoras where everything has a specific function and an expiration date. Impassive rituals of the assembly where the staff rotates through three shifts learning to do one thing, always the same, ad infinitum, until he/she changes location, leaving tons of trash and without pay, or else dies of cancer, exhaustion, or malnutrition, but in this case the vacancy shall be filled immediately by another of the thousands of desperate people who inhabit the most degraded of the industrial sectors.59

58 Estévez, “Jaime Ruiz-Otis,” 133. 59 Rubén Bonet, “La poética tóxica del desecho postindustrial,” Revista Replicante, October 2010, http://revistareplicante.com/galeria/grafica/la-poetica-toxica-del-desecho-postindustrial/. Originally written in Spanish, “Maquiladoras donde todo tiene una función específica y una fecha de caducidad. Rituales impasibles de la cadena de montaje (maquila) donde el personal que rota por los tres turnos aprende a hacer una sola cosa y siempre la misma, ad infinitum, hasta que la maquila se mude dejando toneladas de basura e impagos, o en su defecto se muera de cáncer o cansancio y malnutrición el operario, aunque en este caso su vacante sera cubierta de inmediato por otro de los miles de desesperados que habitan la parte más degradada de los sectores productivos del entramado industrial.”

Figure 6. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Registros de Labor/Trademarks, five paneled piece, 2004. Prints made from industrial cutting mats. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Souce: Teagle, Rachel, ed. Strange New World: Art and Design From Tijuana. La Jolla: San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, 2006.

Jaime Ruiz Otis has provided an avenue through Registros de Labor/Trademarks to show his

audience of consumers a series of haunting images as symbols of the employees of the

industrial sector, creating an opportunity for the workers in the maquiladoras to be remembered, considered and immortalized long after their employment abilities expire.

CHAPTER 4

JAIME RUIZ OTIS RESPONDS TO TIJUANA AS A GLOBAL CITY OF CULTURE AND INDUSTRY

It [Tijuana] is a city of uncommon vitality, creativity, and verve, a model for the globalized world of the twenty-first century. --Hugh M. Davies Foreword to Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana

As a result of the influx of immigrants to Tijuana, the city is constantly growing,

spreading east towards Tecate and south towards Rosarito. In the 2005 census, Tijuana was

the sixth largest city in Mexico with a population of 1,483,992 and it was considered one of

the fastest growing cities in the country.60 The communities that develop in Tijuana often begin their neighborhoods without the basic community resources of water and sewage, trash pickup and electricity. Due to the transitory nature of the city, it is common to see homes constructed with the materials available to the residents: anything from old doors, used car parts, and used tires.61 There is an inherent sense of do-it-yourself creativity in Tijuana,

seemingly often times based on necessity, and it runs its course throughout the city,

interpreting, once again, the asymmetrical relationship Tijuana has with its neighbor, San

Diego.

The identity of Tijuana cannot be mentioned without discussing the border fence.

Gloria Anzaldúa stated, “The US-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third

60 Subhrajit Guhathakurta, David Pijawka, and Edward Sadalla, The Border Observatory Project: The State of the U.S.-Mexico Border Cities (Scottsdale: Arizona State University, 2010), 9. 61 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change, 164.

World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the

lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country – a border culture.”62 Similarly,

Jaime Ruiz Otis, when asked about the border, said, “It [the border fence] is fucking bad. It

is a fucking contamination of the landscape. It’s a scar across mountains, it has killed the

landscape.”63

As the history of the Tijuana-San Diego border region evolves, beginning in 1847

with the Mexican War, one thing remains constant: the palpable asymmetry as one of the

U.S.’s most affluent cities lies stretched out alongside an urban metropolis in a developing country. Anthropologist Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez remarks,

The border is among the most important ideas in our lives simply because our identities are so tied to this creation…The various ‘fences’ through which Mexicans peer when looking north and those through which non-Mexicans peer looking south are all integral to the created and constructed border as defined by their respective national states: the United States of American and the Republic of Mexico. Such a border has not only kept people out and let some in physically but also created cultural and historical views that function in the same manner.64

Especially in 2006-2008, with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security approving and commencing construction of a new fence larger in stature and aggressive in nature along the

Tijuana Estuary region of the border, the fence serves as a constant reminder that the differences between the two nations could not be greater – the emotional and metaphorical distance between the two nations is seemingly infinite. Museum director and curator

62 Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 25. 63 Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010. 64 Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), 265-266.

Osvaldo Sánchez calls it, “mutations in identity,” suggesting that, “Boundary lines are more

than territorial delimiters; they are visual folds.”65

The irony of the border fence and in the continual construction and application of

security detail is greatest when factored into the concept of globalization. While citizens have access to all parts of the world, people in the U.S. can follow a civil uprising in Egypt in real time, and while virtual borders are coming down, this monolithic fence serves as a reminder of a political and social construct that appears to be impenetrable. Anthropologist and geographer David Harvey asks,

Why are we putting walls up in some parts of the world and tearing them down elsewhere? Why are people going behind gated communities, living in gated communities and putting walls all over the place? At the same time, we’ve got globalization going on. What’s going on? What’s the relationship between these two? And I want to argue that the relationships are not contingent or accidental. There is a structural transformation going on in the ways in which life is being worked out geographically through globalization.66

When we talk about a city like Tijuana, whose identity is inextricably linked to the border

fence, we must keep in mind that several communities exist with their homes and their streets

literally within physical contact of the fence. The landscape of Tijuana is not that of San

Diego, there is no expansive acreage that exists between the fence and the first communities

of San Diego like there is along much of the San Diego border region (with the exception of

San Ysidro). The adage that (in this case) the border fence is in these communities’ backyards holds particularly true in the context of many people in Tijuana. Those residents

who are not physically pushing against the border, are in contact with the fence several times

65 Osvaldo Sánchez, “Rito de paso/Rite of Passage,” in Fugitive Sites: inSITE 2000-2001, eds. Cecilia Garza and Osvaldo Sánchez (San Diego: Installation Gallery, 2002), 171. 66 David Harvey, “Conversation I: The University and the Museum in the Global Economy,” in Fugitive Sites: inSITE 2000-2001, eds. Cecilia Garza and Osvaldo Sánchez (San Diego: Installation Gallery, 2002), 41.

throughout their day. Ambassador of Mexico in the United States Carlos A. de Icaza

comments,

The Tijuana-San Diego region comprises one of the most dynamic and intense border areas in the world. Tijuana is a city where the confluence of two languages, two worlds, and two dissimilar cultures is best identified. The result is a ‘hybrid culture’ in which identity is constantly reformulated and questioned. For that reason, writers such as Juan Villoro refer to Tijuana as ‘the emblematic border of the Global Village,’ while academics such as Néstor García Canclini speak of it as ‘one of the principal laboratories of post-modernism.’67

There is no escaping the symbolism that exists in this region, thus the arts have a profound

presence in Tijuana, documenting and interpreting local society and culture, as society and

culture document the local arts.

TIJUANA’S CULTURAL IDENTITY Tijuana’s history of the arts is brief, yet rich and dynamic. The first arts and culture institution, Casa de la Cultura, was founded in 1977, and while artists were active years prior to the 1970s, Casa de la Cultura was one of the first and few venues for the arts. Later, in

1982, Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT) opened, and a new era of artistic opportunities

began. With CECUT, citizens of Tijuana could enjoy national and international exhibitions,

as well as participate in local and regional artistic expressions.68 Seemingly, from the time

Tijuana had an opportunity to produce art for the public, the arts have held a strong presence in the dynamics of the city. Artists were engaged in cross-border identity, and collectives like the Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo, beginning in 1984, were very active in engaging an audience from the greater border region. Curator Stephanie Hanor states,

67 Carlos A. de Icaza, foreword to Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana, ed. Rachel Teagle (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 15. 68 José Manuel Valenzuela Arce, “This is Tijuana: Pastiches, Palimpsests and Cultural Sampling,” in Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana, ed. Rachel Teagle (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 44.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, artwork concerned with border issues often came under the rubric of identity politics. Subjects such as border relations, political corruption, media bias, and migrant labor served as fodder for artistic exploration. In a period when artists were struggling to address a history of misrepresentation of ethnic and cultural identity and to reclaim and redefine their own representation, the social realities of the border spurred the creation of works meant to confront viewers and directly engage them in a dialogue about cultural assumptions.69

In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented,

forever shaping the border region as an area of industry and labor. Two years prior to

NAFTA, in 1992, the biennial and bi-national art project inSITE produced its first project, an

opportunity for artists from around the world to exhibit in San Diego and Tijuana, calling

attention to and highlighting the border region, and the San Diego-Tijuana area as unique and

vibrant platform for a greater global conversation. Most recently, the contemporary artists of

Tijuana seem to remove the importance and the burden of the past visions of transcending and/or highlighting the border. Instead, Jaime Ruiz Otis and his contemporaries seem to be engaged in organically describing their city as they see and exist within it. In 2006, Elisabeth

Malkin with the New York Times writes, “The city’s artists now seem riveted not so much on border conflicts or a dream destination as on Tijuana itself: an experimental laboratory for people with hybrid identities and a growing global awareness.”70

In 2008, CECUT opened a new gallery space, El Cubo, attached to CECUT but with

a more contemporary mission. El Cubo offers several large gallery spaces for artists both

locally and nationally/internationally. In addition, it is a cultural space that invites Tijuana to

come together for different events. While CECUT continues to offer cultural and academic

69 Stephanie Hanor, “TRANSactions: Across and Beyond Borders,” in TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, ed. Stephanie Hanor (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 18. 70 Malkin, “Tijuana Transforms.”

events, El Cubo offers opportunities for local DJs and culinary artists to exhibit their work to

a group of like-minded residents. The first art exhibition in El Cubo was titled Proyecto

cívico/Civic Project, curated by Ruth Estévez and Lucía Sanromán. In their exhibition

information, they asked several questions about the purpose and intention of a space like El

Cubo in Tijuana. Most pressing, was the question, “To whom does this space belong?” In addition were the following questions,

To what kind of citizen is the civic project of El Cubo directed? How does the geographical, political, and social context of the city of Tijuana and its inhabitants intersect with the institutional aims of the gallery space? What kinds of power relations are visible between this city and its citizens in a context so far removed from the centralized nationalism that largely determines the structures of power in the rest of Mexico?71

While the curators, museum directors and artists were searching for an answer to these questions, it seems as though the city of Tijuana, as a public arts institution itself, was asking

similar questions. It is in these questions that Jaime Ruiz Otis explores his responses, and

asks his own questions in search of an equally important response. In his exploration, he

becomes a reflection of his contemporaries throughout Tijuana and Southern California.

People within and beyond Tijuana begin to look to him to determine and understand Tijuana

as a complex and dynamic city.

MAQUILADORAS AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF TIJUANA One of the many implications of a “first-world” nation bordered against a

“developing” nation post-NAFTA is the plethora of maquiladoras dotting the borderline

from Tijuana to Matamoros. According to border theorist, José Manual Valenzuela Arce,

71 Ruth Estévez and Lucía Sanromán, “Una suposición se desvanece/A Vanishing Presupposition,” in Proyecto cívico/Civic Project, eds. Ruth Estévez and Lucía Sanromán (Tijuana: Centro Cultural Tijuana, 2008), 23.

“the growth of the maquiladora industry led to a reorganization of Tijuana’s urban space,

and a smoothing out of its social edges. This growth was an expression of a new global

condition marked by the internationalization of production and of the labor market…”72 In

2005, there were approximately 2,100 maquiladora plants along the entire United

States/Mexico border, employing more than one million people,73 and in 2006, according to

the Mexican national census, Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática

(INEGI), there were 568 maquiladoras in Tijuana that employed 165,000 workers.74 The maquiladora plants acquire great amounts of waste, both waste brought in from the United

States and waste on site. This accumulation leads to significant environmental effects that are among the many aspects of the maquiladoras’ impacts that result in a decreased quality of life. Clearly, a condition such as this has an intense effect on culture – one that seeks documentation through the eyes of an artist like Jaime Ruiz Otis. According to contributing essayist to the TRANSactions catalogue, Albert Park,

Ruiz Otis highlights the sublimity and poetry of seemingly banal objects in his self-designated ‘responsibilities.’ His works not only bespeak an inventive spirit, a keen eye, and an improvisational sensibility, but also a parallax view of two starkly differing economic and socio-cultural realities resonant in the border town of Tijuana.75

While the maquiladora industry has grown exponentially post-NAFTA, the border

region has traditionally been occupied by foreign investment and manufacturing plants.

During the years of Porifirio Díaz, a 12-mile zona libre in northern Mexico was established

72 Valenzuela Arce, “This is Tijuana,” 43. 73 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change, 91. 74 Norma Iglesias Prieto, Emergencias: Las artes visuales en Tijuana (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2008), 93. 75 Albert Park, “Ruiz Otis, Jaime,” in TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, ed. Stephanie Hanor (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 104.

to facilitate import and export to and from the border region to Mexico’s northern neighbor.76

In 1965 and in response to the end of the U.S. sponsored guest worker program (the Bracero program ended in 1964) and the subsequent return of several immigrants to the Mexican border region, the Mexican government established the Border Industrialization Program.

This brought the first maquiladoras to the border region, most of them located in Tijuana and

Ciudad Juarez.77 The maquiladoras were established under collaboration with the U.S. in

that they had the same advantages under U.S. tariff rules; allowing goods to be exported for

assembly and re-imported to the U.S.78 With the abundance of maquiladoras in Tijuana

came the abundance of employment and thus migrants from throughout Mexico. In 10 years,

from 1960-1970, Tijuana’s population doubled (to 300,000 residents) and a similar increase

has maintained over the years.79

As the maquiladora industry continues to develop as well as the population and urban sprawl of Tijuana, so does stress and strain continue to increase on the physical environment.

James Gerber and Joan B. Anderson note that of the many sources causing stress on the environment in the border region, the two most significant sources are an increase in emissions and industrial waste, especially with factories continuing to develop and flourish in the region, and the degradation of the environment due to a rapid and constant growth in

76 Adele Davies, introduction to The Giving Gaze: An Intimate Topography of the Border/La mirada pródiga: Una topografía íntima de la frontera, by Manlio César Correa, Mario Martín Flores, and José-Rodolfo Jacobo (San Diego: LARC Press, 2004), xxv. 77 José Manuel Valenzuela Arce, “Chapter 2, Nortec Arrives: The Beginning,” in Paseo del nortec: This is Tijuana, eds. Juan Claudio Retes and José Manuel Valenzuela Arce, trans. Quentin Pope and Jonathan Roedes (Mexico City: Trilce Ediciones, 2004), 90. 78 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change, 87. 79 Josh Kun, “Enter Nortec, Enter a New Backlot,” in Paseo del nortec: This is Tijuana, eds. Juan Claudio Retes and José Manuel Valenzuela Arce, trans. Quentin Pope and Jonathan Roedes (Mexico City: Trilce Ediciones, 2004), 316.

population. 80 Included in both major sources of environmental hazard is an abundant increase in waste, air pollution, and strain on the natural resources available. Gerber and

Anderson state, “These environmental stresses are not unique to the border but rather are the side effects of economic growth, with the difference that pollution is not contained by international boundaries.”81

INTROFOTOSENSIPROYECTO (2005) In Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back, of

2000, a journalist interviewing Gómez-Peña asks, “What do Mexicans and Americans share across the border?” To which Gómez-Peña replied, “Crisis, pure crises, displacement,

fear…and reciprocal sexual desire. The rest is geography, man…and TV of course.”82

In 2005, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego awarded its first “stART Up” award to Jaime Ruiz Otis, as an emerging artist from the San Diego/Tijuana border region.

This annual prize is, “intended to honor regional artists of exceptional promise.”83 In

conjunction with the award, Ruiz Otis installed a collection of work for the museum’s Cerca

Series in its downtown San Diego location. As the audience’s introduction to Jaime Ruiz

Otis’s exhibition, he utilized television screens to create a site-specific maze upon entrance to

the museum space. A large portion of the installation was titled Introfotosensiproyecto, and

it included several panels, layer upon layer, of television screens (Figure 7). The screens

were stripped of all electronics, to reveal a simple, somewhat opaque plastic screen,

80 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change. 81 Ibid., 7. 82 Gómez-Peña, Dangerous Border Crossers, 6. 83 Pincus, “Recycling Project,” 37.

Figure 7. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Introfotosensiproyecto (view 1), 2005. Television screens, blinking bulbs, motion sensors. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Downtown location. Source: Pérez, Luis Alonso. “Las sobras de Jaime Ruiz Otis.” La Prensa San Diego. June 10, 2005. http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/ archieve/june10-05/otis.htm. discarded as a result of manufacturing error. The panels of attached screens created walls: some floor to ceiling, some suspended from the ceiling in the center of the space, and some still affixed to the actual gallery walls. Jaime Ruiz Otis installed several blinking bulbs that emanated from small towers throughout the space, projecting light onto the panels (or walls) of screens, as these panels/walls became semi-transparent reflectors of light. The audience maneuvered through the maze of panels Ruiz Otis constructed throughout the space. As the audience travelled, throughout the space sensors detecting movement triggered the lights to reflect against the crafted walls. Robert L. Pincus of the San Diego Union Tribune

commented that the project was, “a rough-hewn light show of sorts, a video-style installation

without video.”84 It was a work both minimalist and interactive. According to Luis Alonso

Pérez, writer for La Prensa San Diego, Ruiz Otis’s intentions were to cause different

sensations with sources of filtered light on the plastic walls of television screens. Some

appeared to be murals against the walls, others hung from the ceiling, and others still

magnified and transformed light intermittently and were activated by the movement of

viewers by sensors that were installed in the room (Figure 8).85

Introfotosensiproyecto is clearly a name crafted by the artist. Jaime Ruiz Otis often creates a play on words with his titles. This title is a combination of several words: Intro

(introducción/introduction), foto (photo), sensi (a play on words itself, meaning senses/sensory experience) and proyecto (project). Jaime Ruiz Otis more or less provided the audience with an overview of what to expect in the exhibit with this one word. This piece was the first work people approached as they entered the museum, it was their introduction.

The light show that occurred as a response to the audience’s movement created light reflecting off the screens. It is possible Jaime Ruiz Otis selected photo (foto) because this process, for the audience, could have been like a flash from a camera. Perhaps he was comparing the layout and effect of the piece to the photovoltaic process in which energy is generated with the use of solar panels, similar to the television screens. There is a play on the audience’s senses (sensi) in this piece, due to the interactive nature of the sensors and light sources. The work itself is the project (proyecto), as could the process of moving throughout the piece be considered a project.

84 Ibid. 85 My translation from Spanish. Pérez, “Las sobras de Jaime Ruiz Otis.”

Figure 8. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Introfotosensiproyecto (view 2), 2005. Television screens, blinking bulbs, motion sensors. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Downtown location. Source: Pérez, Luis Alonso. “Las sobras de Jaime Ruiz Otis.” La Prensa San Diego. June 10, 2005. http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/ archieve/june10-05/otis.htm.

Ruiz Otis used materials from one of the largest sectors of the maquiladora industry to perhaps comment on the amount of waste acquired in Mexico as a result of mass consumerism. For example, approximately half of the televisions purchased in North

America are assembled in Tijuana and the electronics sector is one of the largest manufacturing sectors in Mexico. In 2000, combined with the clothing and auto sectors, the three accounted for two-thirds of all workers employed in maquiladoras and approximately

half the plants,86 and in 2003, five out of every 10 TV sets purchased in North America were

assembled in Tijuana.87 With the use of the discarded television screens removed from their

normal occupation, there are a couple of reactions on the part of the viewer in the

Introfotosensiproyecto installation (Figure 9). First, the overwhelming amount of television

screens in the museum space (while there is no specific count of screens, the very idea that

there are enough to create several new walls while covering existing walls signifies the vast

number used in this installation) suggests the qualities of mass consumerism in North

America. As each screen equals a television discarded in the maquiladoras, the viewer

cannot help but imagine the numerous televisions occupying homes across North America and the great waste involved in making these electronics. Paradoxically, the way the light projects on the screens, and their position in the museum space, invoke a sense of beauty and ethereal qualities not usually associated with televisions. It is of no surprise that Ruiz Otis was selected as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s first stART Up award recipient, as Pincus stated Ruiz Otis, “is wholly deserving as well as a smart first pick.”88

As an artist in the contemporary atmosphere of Tijuana, Jaime Ruiz Otis is a product of his environment and is an asset in the production of the artistic environment of the city.

Curator, Taiyana Pimentel explores the contemporary Tijuana artists in the Tijuana Sessions catalogue and identifies the social and artistic environment that Ruiz Otis is a part of. She fittingly states,

86 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change, 92. 87 Teagle, “Art and the Logic,” 32. 88 Pincus, “Recycling Project,” 37.

Figure 9. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Introfotosensiproyecto (detail), 2005. Television screens, blinking bulbs, motion sensors. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Downtown location. Source: Pérez, Luis Alonso. “Las sobras de Jaime Ruiz Otis.” La Prensa San Diego. June 10, 2005. http://www.laprensa- sandiego.org/archieve/june10-05/otis.htm.

The art movement that exists in Tijuana belongs to a generation of cultural managers immersed in the process of transforming Tijuana’s identity. It consists of a group of young artists who seem to be designing a new model of visual icon featuring a combination of anthropological analysis, the use of new technologies, business models, marketing strategies, incorporation within economic mechanisms, challenges to the traditional conception of the cultural institution – similar to galleries and museums – and, above all, an exploration of an interdisciplinary model in which visual languages establish a dialogue with the fields of architecture, design, music, dance and bilingual literature. Visual artists and writers share an acknowledgment of the border problem, going beyond hybrid theories and seeking to re-position themselves with respect to their own historical constructions.89

89 Taiyana Pimentel, “Tijuana Artistic Chronicles,” in Tijuana Sessions: Madrid, 8 de febrero–10 de abril de 2005, ed. Ana Laura Cué (Madrid: Dirección General de Archivos, 2005), 60.

TAPETE RADIAL (RADIAL RUG) (2001) In 2006, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla location, produced an

exhibition featuring forty-eight painters, sculptors, photographers, video makers and

conceptual artists from Latin America titled TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American

and Latino Art. The exhibition’s purpose was, according to museum director, Hugh M.

Davies, in the catalogue’s preface, “an old-fashioned attempt to promote the understanding of

others through the experience of their culture – ours is a humble but time-tested effort to

foster international empathy through the sharing of art.”90

Jaime Ruiz Otis contributed Tapete Radial (Radial Rug) of 2001, made from

discarded tires and zip-ties, resulting in a handcrafted rug and interesting message, 77 inches

(or 195.6 cm) in diameter (Figure 10). The circular (radial) rug is large enough that there are three panels of cut and flattened tires. It appears as though the artist removed the walls of the

tires, leaving intact the tire patterns. The middle panel of cut and attached tires are

positioned in the opposite direction from the two panels on either side, creating the perspective, along with the different designs on each tire piece, of a loosely woven, or braided area rug. Jaime Ruiz Otis used black zip ties to attach each piece and cut the exterior edges into a perfect circle. Albert Park, contributing essayist to the TRANSactions catalogue,

states,

Ruiz Otis re-appropriates steel-belted tired worn from use, thereby transforming industrial detritus into functional art. Meticulously de-belted by hand and cut into workable strips, the resulting vulcanized rubber slats are laid flat, tread up, and stitched together with plastic zip-ties. With this clever reorientation, what was once the treader is now the trodden upon.91

90 Hugh M. Davies, preface to TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, ed. Stephanie Hanor (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 8. 91 Park, “Ruiz Otis, Jaime,” 104.

Figure 10. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Tapete Radial (Radial Rug), 2001, exhibited in 2006 for TRANSactions. Steel-belted tires, plastic zip-ties. 77 inches in diameter. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla location. Source: Hanor, Stephanie, ed. TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006.

Tapete Radial translates to Radial Rug in English. At first glance, this would seem an

obvious title, however Jaime Ruiz Otis’s choice to use the word “Radial” could potentially

have further meaning. A radial tire is a specific tire in which the direction of the cords supporting the tire are at right angles, prolonging the tire’s life.92 With this in mind, perhaps

Jaime Ruiz Otis intended to direct the audience back to the material’s initial use: as a tool to

transport items/goods/products/people, etc. from one place to another. Most significantly is

the deeper symbolism of the transporting of goods from one country to the other, traveling

through this region.

92 I referred to dictionary.com for a brief definition of a radial tire: Dictionary.com, “Radial Tire,” Dictionary.com, accessed June 6, 2012, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/radial+.

Ruiz Otis’s use of discarded tires in Tapete Radial is an interesting and profound

choice, and poignantly specific to the Tijuana border region. According to writer Heriberto

Yépez, “A large part of the city [Tijuana] has been built by immigrants or the poor who

‘invaded’ the hills and raised their hovels on its slopes and cliffs made of used tyres [sic], old

wood and every kind of material the human mind can imagine. Tijuana was built by

recycling. Tijuana redefined the idea of recycling.”93 As United States companies own the

majority of maquiladoras along the United States/Mexico border, the importing/exporting traffic that crosses the border region on a daily basis is overwhelming. According to

Anderson and Gerber, “Between 1995 and 2004, the number of trucks crossing into the

United States from Mexico rose from 2.9 million to 4.5 million.”94 The United States brings

large shipments of materials across the border to the maquiladoras, where the materials are converted into their products, then shipped back across boundary lines to the United States.

As previously stated, the environmental implications with this practice are immense, and

Ruiz Otis has created an ironic and almost satirical commentary on this process. Tires appear

to be multi-functioning in Tijuana, serving several purposes including use in the construction

of homes and the stabilizing of hillsides. Many of the tires are those that have been used in

the United States and brought across the border to be discarded, as a result of strict

environmental regulations in the United States in comparison with the much more relaxed

policies in Mexico, regardless of NAFTA laws insisting on the removal of industrial waste to

93 Heriberto Yépez, “Tijuana: Processes of a Science Fiction City Without a Future,” in Febrero–10 de Tijuana sessions: Madrid, 8 de abril de 2005, ed. Ana Laura Cué (Madrid: Dirección General de Archivos, 2005), 46. 94 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change, 107.

the country of origin (in this case, the United States).95 This act of dumping one nation’s

waste on another is an extremely unhealthy and aggressive approach to bi-national

contribution, and not in the least bit neighborly. The residents of Tijuana have used this

process to their benefit, recycling different items of waste into various necessary elements.

San Diego architect Teddy Cruz observes,

Through improvisational tactics of construction and distribution of goods and ad hoc services, a process of assembly begins by recycling the elements and materials from San Diego’s urban debris…This process suggests that Tijuana builds its periphery with San Diego’s waste. Garage doors are used to make walls; rubber tires are cut and taken apart, then folded into loops, clipped in a figure eight, and interlocked, creating a system that can be woven into a stable retaining wall. Wooden crates make up the armature for other imported surfaces such as recycled refrigerator doors, etc.96

It is cleverly ironic that Ruiz Otis selected worn tires for his finely crafted rug, perhaps

commenting on this very unbalanced relationship. Aleca Le Blanc of Arte en Colombia,

states the irony, “Is somewhat exaggerated by the cleanliness and care recently discovered

for the waste products once they enter the museum world.” 97 She continues, “These works are comments on larger issues of trade and international policies and easily describe the U.S. relationship with several nations. This work resonates far beyond local politics of the boundary between San Diego and Tijuana.”98

95 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change, 110. 96 Teddy Cruz, “The Allure of Tijuana,” in Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana, ed. Rachel Teagle (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 58. 97 Aleca Le Blanc, “Jaime Ruiz Otis,” Arte en Colombia 58 (2005): 153. Original quote: “Esta ironía es muy bien exagerada por la limpieza y el cuidado recién descubiertos que estos productos de desecho reciben una vez entran al mundo del museo.” 98 Ibid. Original quote: “Estas obras hacen observaciones sobre problemas más grandes de comercio y políticas internacionales, y describen con facilidad la relación de Estados Unidos con varias naciones. Esta obra resuena mucho más allá de la política local del límite entre San Diego y Tijuana.”

Jaime Ruiz Otis seems the most fitting to document Tijuana’s process of collecting

and repurposing waste, because of his experience as an employee of the maquiladora

industry. Though not all of his found art supplies are from maquiladora waste, he has a large collection of supplies found in recycling yards and junkyards; both forms of waste carry a similar message: the collective waste of a complex region, and how the residents of Tijuana adapt. In using the waste of others to create his art, Ruiz Otis is both living his reality as a resident of Tijuana and highlighting his neighbors’ reality. He creates art to signify a tradition and way of life of the people of Tijuana, thereby standing as an authentic to place, local artist. Curator Rachel Teagle aptly states,

The yonke, a Tijuanense term that plays on the Spanish work for junk (yonque), is a byproduct of both the maquiladora industry’s waste and U.S. consumer culture. Filled largely with demolished cars from the U.S., Yonkes are automotive junkyards that find a particularly lively trade in Tijuana. Yonkes occupy a privileged place in many artists’ construction of the city’s symbolic life…In the hands of artists like Jaime Ruiz Otis, the transformation of recycled materials becomes a poetic metaphor for the city itself.99

Jaime Ruiz Otis exists within a vibrant era of culture and the arts in Tijuana. Along

with his contemporaries, they continue to create the reality of Tijuana, as Tijuana continues

to create their realities as artists and documenters of the city. Despite the drug cartel violence

that began escalating in Tijuana in 2008, the artists are active in documenting their city’s

dynamism and complexities. Each artist has a detailed message, and a specific niche, yet all

of Ruiz Otis’s contemporaries return to a universal message that Tijuana is a unique and

intriguing contemporary city. Norma Iglesias Prieto documents, and in a way almost

personifies Tijuana as she accurately observes the attributes of the creativity in Tijuana,

stating, “The city inspires and imposes creativity on all its residents, both as a survival

99 Teagle, “Art and the Logic,” 118.

mechanism and as a means of resisting the great colossus to the north. It is a young city,

filled with trans-border processes ranging from maquiladoras and undocumented migration, to commuter work, the large and powerful waste economy, drug trafficking, and tourism.”100

Throughout the many struggles of Tijuana, as a city with a controversial reputation and history, the exuberant energy that exists within the arts and culture movement is striking, palpable and if allowed, it often draws even the most apprehensive viewer to look, and to attempt to understand.

100 Norma Iglesias Prieto, “Tijuana: Between Reality and Fiction,” in Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana, ed. Rachel Teagle (La Jolla: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2006), 73.

CHAPTER 5

THE FUTURE FOR JAIME RUIZ OTIS AND TIJUANA; CONCLUDING REMARKS

“Where does all the trash go?” asked a young Jaime to his grandfather. “Well, to the earth” the grandfather answered. 101 --Luis Alonso Pérez Las Sobras de Jaime Ruiz Otis

TRADE MARKS (2008) Trade Marks, was installed and exhibited at the Centro Cultural de Tijuana (CECUT),

in their ground level exhibition space (la sala de Exposiciones Planta Baja), connecting the building to the new gallery, El Cubo, between September 2008 and February 2009, as part of

CECUT’s series: Ephemeral, arte en muros. The exhibition space is a space reserved for

emerging artists from the Californias (including California in the U.S. as well as Baja

California), and according to an article in Frontera, the objective of CECUT’s series:

Ephemeral, arte en muros is to facilitate the production of unconventional contemporary art expressions.102

Trade Marks was a series of three murals in a large exhibition space, addressing

international companies and their distinct sociopolitical and ecological effects on the

environment through the significant waste and pollution of. Ruiz Otis created different and

101 “A donde va toda la basura” preguntó Jaime a su abuelo cuando era niño. “Pues a la tierra” le contestó. Pérez, “Las Sobras de Jaime Ruiz Otis.” 102 Luis Enrique Mendoza, “Invita a reflexión con arte,” Frontera, September 14, 2008, http://www.frontera.info/edicionimpresa/ejemplaresanteriores/20080914/MOS.pdf (page discontinued).

65 chaotic scenes of an industrialized Tijuana (Figure 11). He first painted the walls neutral colors of blues and light greens and yellows to represent the sky and landscape. Several areas on the floor were also painted like pools of water, but in shades of dark blue and black.

Once the walls and floor were dry, he created the scenes of industrialization and subsequent environmental degradation using an immense amount of discarded stickers from electronics plants, like Memorex and Sony. The plethora of stickers is the most striking aspect of Trade

Marks, simply because the audience is in contact with so much waste that alone, would seem small and seemingly insignificant, but in bulk is overwhelming.

Figure 11. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Trade Marks, 2008. Paint, stickers, plastic tubing and light. Source: Centro Cultural Tijuana. “Una idea de convivencia comunitaria, Trade Marks.” Centro Cultural Tijuana. Accessed March 22, 2009. http://www.ce cut.gob.mx/home/trademarks.php (page discontinued).

Neither how many rolls of stickers Jaime Ruiz Otis found for this project nor how

many he used are known numbers; however, there are scenes in the murals where the amount

of stickers are numerous, overlapped and appear as if they were a part of a mosaic. While the

actual count of the thousands of stickers is unknown, the stickers succeed in creating the

artist’s intended story. On one wall, he has a prominent, bright orange, red and yellow sun

that bleeds onto the ceiling, as it is positioned firmly over a body of water that spills onto the

floor. The sunrays glimmer as light in the space reflects upon them. Another wall shows a

landscape of mountains with clouds and factories. There are patches of earth: green and yellow clusters, perhaps trees or other traditional elements of landscapes. Additionally, paved roads littered with traffic cut through the natural landscape. The third wall is partially covered by a mountain of trash (created using several layers of stickers). Again this wall appears to be a landscape, but one that has been compromised by industrial pollution and human population. In addition, an array of plastic parts found among the many dumpsters

Ruiz Otis sifted through were used to turn several areas of the floor into scenes of toxic pools where once flowed a natural water supply (Figure 12).103

The title of this work, Trade Marks, is unique because it is only in English. Perhaps

because a majority of the products the stickers would be used for (televisions, computers, tape and CD players, etc.) are sold to people in the United States, and therefore a title in

Spanish would seem disjointed. Also, Jaime Ruiz Otis intentionally split the title into two words: Trade Marks. Separately, the words potentially define the markings left on the

103 Cultura a Cuadro 14, “Trademarks,” YouTube, October 21, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=gGEVFSHqn7I.

Figure 12. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Trade Marks (detail), 2008. Paint, stickers, plastic tubing and light. Source: Centro Cultural Tijuana. “Una idea de convivencia comunitaria, Trade Marks.” Centro Cultural Tijuana. Accessed March 22, 2009. http://www.cecut.gob.mx/home/trade marks.php (page discontinued). environment of the Tijuana region by the immensity of trade produced. The manufacturers have left their trade’s mark on the region.

Unfortunately, Ruiz Otis’s depictions of a toxic environment were not far from reality. As the population along the border increases in such drastic numbers, along with the mass production of maquiladoras, the environment undergoes significant stress.104 Toxic waste, chemical spills, air emissions among other effects lead to a degradation of the natural environment, as depicted by Ruiz Otis. In Trade Marks, this bleak outlook on the environment is combined with a dose of satire pointing towards the presence of foreign-

104 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change, 103.

owned industries as the problem, and their less than hasty attempt to solve the present issues.

Joan B. Anderson and James Gerber explain that under the La Paz Agreement of 1983,

maquiladoras are required to return industrial waste to the country of origin (aka the country

that owns the maquiladora that is distributing waste), but there are serious discrepancies

between the amount of waste created and that documented.105 Norma Iglesias Prieto states,

The presence of maquiladora plants in Tijuana has substantially contributed to a radical change in the urban landscape and has negatively impacted the environmental quality of the city, although, on the other hand, the industry has led to increased learning in terms of business, technology, industrial and labor relations.106

In these murals, mounds of trash were evident, as well as toxic pollution that was

intermingled with flowing fresh water, conveying the at times forced recycled nature of

Tijuana. Jaime Ruiz Otis again utilizes his strength in his art: transforming waste and

discarded materials into a visually stimulating and cognitively poignant documentation of the

reality of the border region, within the physical parameters of a formal museum institution

(Figure 13 and 14). In fact, Ruiz Otis remarked that his audience in general, not specific to

the Trade Marks exhibition, continually approaches a piece or an installation of his and asks,

“Where is the trash?” They don’t see the trash, and they are surprised when it is identified.107

Albert Park highlights this response to the work of Jaime Ruiz Otis, stating,

In all of Ruiz Otis’s works, one cannot dismiss the inherent irony of the cyclical life of industry’s resulting refuse. With their diverse elements originally financed by U.S. corporations, manufactured and discarded in Mexico, reclaimed and metamorphosed by a Mexican artist, and finally reevaluated and appreciated by

105 Anderson and Gerber, Fifty Years of Change, 110. 106 Iglesias Prieto, Emergencias, 93. “La presencia de las plantas maquiladoras en Tijuana ha contribuido sustancialmente al cambio rardical en el paisaje urbano y ha impactado negativamente en la calidad ambiental de la ciudad, aunque, por otra parte, la industria ha propiciado un mayor aprendizaje en términos de negocios, tecnología relaciones industrials y laborales.” 107 “¿Dónde está la basura?” Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010.

Figure 13. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Trade Marks exhibition (view 1), 2008. Paint, stickers, plastic tubing and light. Source: Centro Cultural Tijuana. “Una idea de convivencia comunitaria, Trade Marks.” Centro Cultural Tijuana. Accessed March 22, 2009. http://www.ce cut.gob.mx/home/trademarks.php (page discontinued).

Figure 14. Jaime Ruiz Otis, Trade Marks exhibition (view 2), 2008. Paint, stickers, plastic tubing and light. Source: Centro Cultural Tijuana. “Una idea de convivencia comunitaria, Trade Marks.” Centro Cultural Tijuana. Accessed March 22, 2009. http://www.cecut. gob.mx/home/trademarks.php (page discontinued).

art patrons in the United States, many of Ruiz Otis’s pieces bestow new gravity to the adage ‘one person’s junk is another’s treasure.’108

In the very nature of his work and his opinions seen in the stories he tells, his process of deconstructing the murals at CECUT in February 2009 involved an open invitation to the community at large to come share the space, their time, and their fellowship, working to remove the murals in order to prepare for the next artist. Jaime Ruiz Otis called this, “a community coexistence idea,” inviting students, professors, and the general community to be a part of this artistic process and sharing in the stories expressed in the murals by the people who live those revealed realities.109 Curator Selene Preciado states, “There is something

poetic and tragic about the fact that when these decals come off the wall upon the closing of

the exhibition, they will go back to their condition as trash.”110 However, the people and

community involved in the process of removing the art and returning the products to waste,

kept with them the stories shared and the experience attained as a part of a project that

reflects a common reality so immediate; there is nothing tragic about that.

JAIME RUIZ OTIS AND HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS Jaime Ruiz Otis has had an active and successful career each year of the twenty-first

century. Beginning in 2000, upon his relocation from Tecate (where he worked in a

maquiladora) to Tijuana and coupled with the plethora of maquiladoras in his new

community, his style of repurposing and reusing industrial waste was born. In his personal

blog, Jaime Ruiz Otis states that Tijuana is the perfect city for him because it is a place where

108 Park, “Ruiz Otis, Jaime,” 104. 109 “una idea de convivencia comunitaria.” Centro Cultural Tijuana, “Una idea de convivencia comunitaria, Trade Marks,” Centro Cultural Tijuana, March 22, 2009, http://www.cecut.gob.mx/home/ trademarks.php (page discontinued). 110 Selene Preciado, “Descartes,” ArtNexus 9, no. 79 (2011): 155-7.

he can find all of the pieces needed for his art, suggesting that had he relocated elsewhere, he

would have been a painter.111 Once again the concept is highlighted: a place such as Tijuana

shaping an identity of a person, and Ruiz Otis’s ability to shape the identity of Tijuana through his art, creating a message and an aesthetic that is local and personal. Throughout his career, he has exhibited in a significant number of solo and group shows, as well as been the recipient of numerous grants, distinctions and residencies.112

Currently, in early 2012, Jaime Ruiz Otis traveled to China as a recipient of a grant

“Artists Residents of the FONCA-CONACYT (National Fund for the Arts and Cultures),” to the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Tsinghua. Ruiz Otis stated in the Tijuana newspaper Zeta that he will be conducting research for his on-going project Las Sobras for a

University of Tsinghua project, Ex-CO2; he is working with industrial waste from the

factories in China and becoming familiar with the industrial world in China.113 In addition,

Ruiz Otis along with two Tijuana artists, Mely Barragan and Daniel Ruanova, are in Beijing,

China, and Ruiz Otis is working alongside Barragan and Ruanova, who have established an artist collective titled, TJ IN CHINA Project Room. According to the TJ IN CHINA Project

Room Facebook page,

TJINCHINA project room in Caochangdi is an independent-arts-pseudo-consulate that produces, promotes, distributes and multiplies contemporary art and dialogue from the borderlands. TJINCHINA links contemporary arts practices from the area between Mexico and California with the contemporary art community in Beijing. The project's main goal is to generate interest in contemporary Tijuana/Border culture in China, giving way to pro-positive cultural mutations

111 Jaime Ruiz Otis, "Semblanza," Jamie Ruiz Otis (blog), May 15, 2012, http://jaimeruizotis.blogspot.com /2010/05/semblanza-por-marisa-raygoza.html. 112 See Appendix for a comprehensive list of Jaime Ruiz Otis’s achievements. 113 Enrique Mendoza Hernández, “Jaime Ruiz Otis en China,” Zeta, August 15, 2011, http://www.zetatijuana.com/2011/08/15/Jaime-ruiz-otis-en-china.

and ongoing dialogue between both societies. “We believe in the immersion of the socio-cultural aspect in our art practices among the communities in which we participate. This led us to have direct contact with the daily growth of the emerging art scene in Tijuana, Mexico, having been part of it for over fifteen years now. For these reasons, we assume our responsibility as generators of this ‘new borderism’ and happily fly the TJ flag within the global community.”114

The artists are currently preparing for an exhibition of their work, The Value of Stuff: Three

Displaced Perceptions on Trade, Tradition, and Trauma, opening May 18th and running

through June 8, 2012 in Caochangdi Village, Chaoyang District Beijing.115

THE SHARED FUTURE FOR JAIME RUIZ OTIS AND TIJUANA Jaime Ruiz Otis has had a relatively brief, but profoundly active career. He is no

longer considered an emerging artist, though at only thirty-five years of age, he has not

reached the climax of his career; he continues to produce a significant amount of work and

has a strong career ahead of him. He has been able to cross the, at times seemingly great,

divide into the center of arts and culture of Mexico City, as well as continuing to secure a

notable reputation and interest internationally. Among the many interesting and dynamic

aspects of Ruiz Otis’s work, perhaps most profound is his constant reminder of the issues at

present in his community, a constant perspective on the local – with the ever present

reminder of how local affects global, and vice versa. Jaime Ruiz Otis uses trash from the

maquiladoras, not simply because he knows and has access to the maquiladoras, but perhaps

because he recognizes a general discrepancy in morality, to human and environmental rights,

in order to have access to “stuff” that ultimately becomes waste in some form or another.

114 Mely Barragan and Daniel Ruanova, “TJ IN CHINA Project Room,” Facebook, May 7, 2012, http://www.facebook.com/TJINCHINAPROJECTROOM. 115 Ibid.

Perhaps he asks, are we guilty of taking advantage of human life and the environment – our

community, our neighbors, our humanity – for capital? Perhaps his body of work is directed

at a continued exploitation of the lives of the people and the landscape of Tijuana, for the

construction of globalization. On one hand the efforts of globalization on consumerism and

capital are supported; and on the other hand, there is a demand for stricter border security

measures, with greater definitions between who and what are allowed within the parameters

of the United States. In their introduction to Borders and Border Politics in a Globalizing

World, Paul Ganster and David E. Lorey state that there remains a problem with political

borders. Instead of borders and boundaries dissipating on their own and/or by humans no

longer creating necessity of said boundaries through a blending of cultures and economies, the borders and boundaries – especially ethnic and national boundaries – appear to be

growing in strength and urgency. 116

In this harsh reality, it is exciting that artists in Tijuana are highlighting and

acknowledging these truths, and whether or not they claim to be political, they are locally

engaged, taking on the task of speaking out on behalf of their community, always with a perspective that change is possible. While the border fence is a very present part of the existence of the residents in Tijuana, there is always potential for transformation. Tijuana can continue to progress, becoming a model city for a globalization that includes a rich and

dynamic cultural identity. At a presentation during the 2000 inSITE exhibition,

anthropologist and geographer David Harvey stated:

Globalization also has effects at other levels, at, for example, the community level….I think it’s very important to recognize that what’s happening in San

116 Paul Ganster and David E. Lorey, introduction to Borders and Border Politics in a Globalizing World, eds. Paul Ganster and David E. Lorey (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2005), xi.

Diego, what’s happening in Baltimore, is not just something that is simply our own back yard politics. It is connected in very important ways to what this globalization process is about. And by acting at that level, you can actually engage in transformative work, which has possibilities when taken towards other levels to do something quite different about the political situation.117

Harvey continued to comment on the contradictions in globalization and how the “personal is

political for many artists.”118 While Jaime Ruiz Otis claims that he is not a political “border”

artist,119 his experience with the maquiladora industry and as a border resident, provides him

with a personal response to the current construction of globalization (and thus degradation of the environment) in his community, which is overtly political by nature. As Ruiz Otis and

Tijuana continue towards the future, his ability to make meaning out of the pain of the current situation can continue a conversation towards transition and change in this border region.

As his career continues to expand, a new form of border art is being defined. Ruiz

Otis, along with his colleagues in Tijuana, is commenting on a new reality along the United

States/Mexico border. This generation of artists strives to locate the border among us, to not deny it nor try to redefine it. Instead, they comment on its existence, and the unfortunate factors that are included in the reality of its existence. Art is often a reflection of society, exposing the truth and encouraging raw and vulnerable understanding. In Emergencias: las artes visuales en Tijuana, Norma Iglesias Prieto comments, that there is a conscious truth that we are depleting the natural, material, spiritual and symbolic elements. Though this depletion exists, there is a brief moment where action towards change is possible, and we are

117 Harvey, “Conversation I,” 38. 118 Ibid., 46. 119 Jaime Ruiz Otis, interview with the author, February 22, 2010.

currently in that moment. She states, “It thus seems clear that we need a new order of

civilization that will bring back options for the future....So, art allows us to visualize and

question our relationship in and with the world.” 120

The chaos and asymmetry that exists within Tijuana is often reflected within the alternative visual arts that are being created by the many artists who work alongside Ruiz

Otis. Theirs is a different Tijuana and a different border region from their predecessors of the Chicano movement and the Border Art Workshop/Taller de arte fronterizo of the previous decades. As society continues to plunge forward into the future, the art of Jaime

Ruiz Otis and his colleagues will continue to be valuable sources of information, pro-action and reaction. Art has a transcending quality that can elicit great change. It is apparent in the works of Ruiz Otis that he believes this as well, and continues to strive to make art that is not political commentary but local reality. For this quest of documenting the truth, his career should be one that is long and stable, one that will have a significant role in shaping art and social conditions along the border for following generations.

120 Iglesias Prieto, Emergencias, 28. “Parece entonces evidente que requerimos un nuevo orden civilizatorio que nos devuelva las opciones de futuro...Entonces, el arte también nos permite visualizar y cuestionar nuestra relación en y con el mundo.”

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APPENDIX

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

JAIME RUIZ OTIS: SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2001

Las Sobras

Sala de Arte – Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana

2002

Rastro

Steppling Gallery – San Diego State University, Imperial Valley Campus, Calexico,

California

2003

Estelas

Museo de la Ciudad de Santiago de Querétaro – Querétaro, Mexico

2004

Strange Kind of Temple

Art in General, Festival Mexico Now – New York

2005

Cerca Series: Jaime Ruiz Otis

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Downtown location – San Diego, California

2007

Sobras recientes

La Caja Negra Gallery – Madrid, Spain

2008

Trade Marks

Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT) – Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

2010

Registros de Labor

Arroniz Gallery – Mexico City

Cúmulo

Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) – Mexico City

2011

Registros de Labor

La Caja Galería – Tijuana

JAIME RUIZ OTIS: GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2002 Axis México: Common Objects and Cosmopolitan Actions Museum of Art – San Diego Across the Border Cova Gallery – San Diego

2003 IX Salón de arte Bancomer Museo de Arte Moderno – Mexico City

2004 Specific Objects: The Minimalism Influence Museum of Contemporary Art – San Diego, California

2005 Summer Pleasures at the Gallery Mark Moore – Los Angeles, California Tijuana Session, Alcalá 31, Mexico en Arco 05 – Madrid, Spain

2006 Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño nuevo mundo: Arte y diseño desde Tijuana Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego – San Diego, California TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego – San Diego, California

2007 MACO Galería La Caja Negra – Mexico City in; ARCO Galería La Caja Negra – Madrid, Spain

2009 20 Años del FONCA Biblioteca Vasconcelos – Mexico City X Bienal de Cuenca Cuenca, Ecuador PavillioM: Arte Contemporáneo Mexicano 53rd Venice Biennale CIGE Beijing, China

2010 Moscow Biennale for Young Art Moscow, Russia Descartes Collaborative at the Museum of Latin American Art – Long Beach, California

2011 Mexico: and Poetics and Politics San Francisco State University – San Francisco, California

2012 Segunda edición del programa Bancomer-MACG arte actual: El incesante ciclo entre idea y acción Museum of Art Carrillo Gil – Mexico City: February 8 – May 13, 2012

The Value of Stuff: Three Displaced Perceptions on Trade, Tradition, and Trauma TJINCHINA Project Room, Caochangdi – Beijing, China: May 18 – June 8, 2012

JAIME RUIZ OTIS: GRANTS, RESIDENCIES AND DISTINCTIONS

2002 Becario del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Scholarship for the National Fund for Arts and Culture) for young creators – Mexico

2003 First place, painting XIV Bienal estatal de Baja California (XIV State Biennale of Baja California) – Baja California, Mexico

2005 Recipient, first stART Up Award Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego – San Diego, California Becario del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura – Baja California

2009 Second place, I Bienal de Estampa Contemporánea Mexicana (I Biennale Mexican Contemporary Prints) La Coruña, Spain, and was granted a residency at CIEC in La Coruña

2010 Becario del Programa Arte Actual for Bancomer-MACG Museum of Art Carrillo Gil – Mexico City

2012 Recipient – Artists Residents of the FONCA-CONACYT Academy of Fine Arts – University of Tsinghua, China