Mexicali Biennial , PARA/normal Borders
curated by María Esther Fernández, Ed Gomez, and Luis G. Hernandez
Across Imperial Valley, Calexico, and Mexicali, October 22, 23, 24, 2026
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, opening March 13, 2027
MexiCali Biennial PARA/normal Borders, a nomadic series of exhibitions and programs, aims to identify the combined regions of California and Mexico as a thin place where spirits, ancestors, and displaced identities move freely.
In this conceptualization, PARA/normal Borders functions as a multi-dimensional space: physically, it is a landscape of migration and surveillance; metaphysically, it operates as a membrane between realities; and psychologically, it serves as a collective unconscious of trauma and transformation.
In this exhibition, paranormal emerges as a critical mode of storytelling, tracing the presence of invisibility, historical erasure, and embodied memory.
For the 2026–27 MexiCali Biennial, PARA/normal Borders, curators María Esther Fernández, Ed Gomez, and Luis G. Hernandez approach the California–Mexico borderlands as a kind of “thin place”—a space in which physical and metaphysical boundaries become blurred.
Across painting, sculpture, photography, moving image, installation, performance, and other media, participating artists consider questions of surveillance, spirituality, identity, migration, memory, alternative knowledge systems, and encounters with the unknown.
The three-day weekend included exhibitions, screenings, conversations, performances, border interventions, and gatherings on both sides of the US–Mexico border.
Digitized ephemera from exhibitions, publications, and special projects, hundreds of art images with details, and a video library.
Archives
1968–2025
