Araceli Hidalgo

Araceli is the Coordinator of Educational Services at El Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez (MACJ). The institution is Juárez’s only contemporary art museum, and features the work of artists from the border region and well beyond. She greeted us at the museum with incredible warmth, showing us around recent exhibitions that included Francisco Mata Rosas’ La Línea (pictured below). She shared her innovative vision for the museum, which she intends to build as a truly public space that transcends border divisions through artistic production and collaboration.

In partnership with the El Paso Museum of Art, MACJ hosts the Transborder Biennial, an exhibition unlike any other. This contemporary art exhibition brings together artists from the entire U.S.-Mexico border region, from Tijuana to Brownsville. The focus of the biennial (now in it’s sixth iteration) is always a transborder theme, which can range from immigration, politics, economics, violence, and landscape, along with the exploration of personal, cultural, and linguistic identities tied to the border region. For more information about the biennial, check out this recent post on artnet, and the website of the El Paso Museum of Art.

Excerpts from Francisco Mata Rosas’ La Línea: