Julián Cardona: Curated by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

JULIAN CARDONA OC TOBER 20-DECEMBER 3 2005 CURATED BY BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZ

CUE AR T FOUNDATION

We are honored and grateful to present this exhibition of Texas and Mexico based artist Julian Cardona, generously curated by poet and author Benjamin Alire Saenz. Mr. Saenz's appreciation of Cardona's work demonstrates how the Foundation's eclectic and discretionary process reveals, naturally but quite unpredictably, each curator's own pluralist views.

We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for exhibition.

CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by offering Mr. Cardona the opportunity for his first solo exhibition.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT A few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I found myself in Jmirez, Mexico, on one side of the largest border community in the world, a fmtunate place to be, and with a camera in my hands. Some were saying that History had ended and announced the arrival of a new Golden Age. Now, more than a decade late1; we hear that the world is flat. That day-by-day, people the world over are rising to the next level in the expanding global economy. If that is true, then we need some name for these other things that have broken out since borders opened up for trade and goods and slammed shut to people: child labor, sweatshops, human trafficking, ever-increasing quantities of drugs, explosive violence and endless streams of migrants. The reinvention of slavery.

I make these photographs to show the faces of men and women and children who find their way across these borders to service this economy based on massive consumption. In a flat world, the only frontier left to conquer may be the empty space inside of ourselves, and for some reason, we hy to fill that space with goods and entertainments. The millions of migrants who come to do the work also settle this frontier. They are the fathers and mothers of the new Americans. Blood will tell.

Julian Cardona

The Old Dispensation, 2005 Gelatin silver print 12 3/4" X 19 1/4"

Market at San Juan Mixtepec, Oaxaca. With a population 30.000, M1xtepec has a long tradition of migration to the United States.

Although 80% of its people reside abroad, county officials 1nc.ude them in the census statistics.

Mostly old men, women and chil­ dren remain 1n the town. The young people have migrated to California; Oregon; Wash ngton; Arizona; New Mexico; Colorado; Wyoming; Texas; Alabama; Georgia; Florida; V1rg nia. North Carolina: South Carolina; Ohio; Michigan and New York.

Oraci6n, 2005

Gelatin silver pr nt 12 3/4" X 19 1/4"

Young men from southern Mexico light candles and pray before leaving the Sonoran town of Altar to cross the border into the United States.

The New Slavery, 2005 Gelatin silver print 12 3/4" X 19 1/4"

Telegraph office in Altar, Sonora.

Immigrants wait 1n line waiting to receive money being sent to them from relatives 1n the United States in order to continue traveling north.

Food for the Journey, 2005

Gelatin silver print 19 1/4" X 12 3/4"

Migrant women from Tlapa, Guerrero having a mea in Altar's main square.

Both are M1xtec Indians who barely speak Spanish.

Under the Feet of Jesus #2, 2004

Gelatin silver print 12 3/4" X 19 1/4"

Mexican immigrants inside a van on their way to the border town of Sasabe, Sonora.

Under the Feet of Jesus #1. 2003 Gelatin silver print 12 3/4" X 19 1/4"

Vans packed with people arrive from Altar. Sonora to the border town of Sasabe. The town. with a population of 1400 has become a center for smuggling people on the U.S./Mex1co border. The estimated number of people crossing into the U.S vanes from 1000 to 3000 daily, depending on the season.

The New Dispensation. 2005 Gelatin silver print 19 1/4" X 12 3/4"

Imm grant's house on a hill 1n San Juan Mixtepec. Oaxaca.

Remittances to Mex co from 1mm1grants in the U.S. rose 1n 2004 to 16.6 billion, an all-time high.

In Oaxaca, the relatives of those living 1n the U.S. use the remit­ tances to build new houses in the grand style shown 1n this photo­ graph. These "mansions" remain, 1n most cases. uninhabited.

The New Jerusalem, 2004 Gelatin silver pnnt 12 3/4" X 19 1/4"

Every day hundreds of people spend the night outside the office of the D1v1sion of Motor Vehicles 1n Durham, trying to get their driver's license before the new rules take effect. On February 2, 2004, IDs issued by the Mexican consulate or similar documents given by other countries to its c1t1zens will no longer be accepted when applying for a North Carolina driver's license.

The measure, which 1s part of "Operation Stop Fraud" 1s expected to have a deep impact on 1mm1grants.

El pan de cada dia. 2004 Gelatin silver print 12 3/4" X 19 1/4"

Immigrant rescued by the residents of Anvaca after enduring eight days in the desert. He was taken to the Ark of the Covenant shelter. which was built near Arivaca by people from the "No More Deaths" movement.

Into the Desert, 2004 Gelatin silver print 12 3/4" X 19 1/4"

Sasabe, Sonora. Three mothers and their chi dren make a stop before cross ng the desert. Daytime tem­ peratures In the area reach up to 115 degrees. June 2004.

EXODUS / 2005-03-28

It is about light and shadow and it is about things always lurking outside the frame. A woman walks through a desert with a baby. A man slips through a fence and gets in a van and anives in North Carolina. A cook in a French bistro in New York sends part of his earnings home to a village in the mountains of Oaxaca where no one knows of escargot. It is black and white and gray, many, many tones of gray.

Like global wanning, it is admitted and yet denied, sensed and yet ignored.

In the next thirty years, Mexico will export at least fifteen million citizens to the United States according to the projections of its own government. This is the largest folk movement occurring on earth, and possibly the largest movement of Homo sapiens in the histo:ry of the world. Each one of these human beings becomes an ATM machine for�Mexico and hurls money back to families in the villages they have fled. This tsunami of money (now running at a minimum of fifteen to twenty billion dollars a year) is the largest and most decent redistribution of wealth in the five hundred year histmy of Mexico since the conquest.

This exodus is final. The people coming north are not going home because home is a collapsing economy, desb·oyed soils, drained rivers, and the death of dreams. This exodus is epic.

This exodus is the primal sto:ry of our era, the flight of the broken to the last treasure houses of the eru.th. This time the images ru.·e not social documents but notes and the notes ru.·e part of a song being improvised by millions of people. This music can be as refreshing as a cold bottle of beer on a hot day, as chilling as the face of a girl who has been raped and murdered on the line. This music can be as warm as the kitchen of a home in a counby where the fru.nily eating has no legal existence. This music can be as moving as the creation of a new world. The song is still being composed and so the music continues to flow and change and smprise.

The only thing that is ceitain is the final note of this song: Yes. Something is ending and something is beginning.

And millions of people are composing a music that two nations pretend not to hear but soon eve1yone will hum.

And know by heart.

Charles Bowden

Bl OS

JULIAN CARDONA

Born in 1960 in Zacatecas, Mexico, Julian Cardona migrated to the border city ofJuarez with his family as a small child. He attended school in Juarez, received vocational training, and worked as a technician in the maquiladora industry. In 1991, Cardona returned to Zacatecas to teach basic photography at the Centro Cultural de Zacatecas; two years later, he started his photojour­ nalism career at El Fronteri;:,o and El Dimio de Juarez. In 1995, Cardona organized the group exhibition, "Nada que ver-Nothing to See," in Juarez, featured in Harper's Maga;:,ine (Charles Bowden, 'While You Were Sleeping: in Juarez, Mexico, photographers expose the violent realities of free trade) in December 1996. Photographs from this exhibition inspired the award-winning book, Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Futur(;. (Aperture, 1998). His photographs taken inside foreign-owned factories in Juarez were also featured in Camera of Dirt (Aperture 159, 2000).

Cardona's work has been exhibited in the Houston FotoFest 98: "Stories About Us;" in "Borders and Beyond," an international group show organized by Pro Helvetia-Arts Council of Switzer­ land; in "Lines of Sight: Views of the U.S./Mexican Border," at galleries of the University of California at Riverside, Santa Cruz and Merced; and in "Photography Past/Foiward: Aperture at 50," at Sotheby's New York in January 2003 and in the Golden-Anniversary publication of the same title. In 2004, Cardona received tl1e Cultural Freedom Fellowship awarded by tl1e Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, NM. BENJAMIN ALIRE SAENZ

Benjanlin Alire Saenz, poet and novelist, was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico in 1954. His first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, was awarded an American Book Award in 1991. He has subsequently published two otl1er books of poetry, Dark and Pe1fect Angels, Elegies in Blue and tl1e fortl1coming Dremning the End of War. His works of fiction include Flowers for the Broken, Carry Me Like Water, The House of Forgetting, and Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood. His most recent novel is entitled In Pe1fect Light published by Rayo/HarperCollins. He is a former Wallace E. Stegner Poetry Fellow at Stanford University and, in addition to tl1e American Book Award, he has won various otl1er awards including a Lannan Poetry Fellowship, a Soutl1west Book Award, tl1e Paterson Prize, tl1e Americas Book Award, and has been a finalist for tl1e Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has taught in tl1e M.F.A. program at tl1e University of Texas at El Paso since 1992.

CUE ART FOUNDATION MISSION CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educa­ tional programs for young artists and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around the countiy.

These programs draw on the unique community of artists, critics, and educators brought together by the Foundation's season of exhibitions, public lectures, and its in-gallery studio program. Gallery internships and stipends afford the next generation of art professionals intimate, working knowledge of the art-making and exhibition processes. CUE's 2000 sq. ft. gallery and offices, located in New York's Chelsea gallery district, seives as the base for the various educational programs conducted by CUE. The Foundation's exhibition season gives unknown or under-recognized artists profes­ sional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring commercial galleries, without the usual financial restraints. CUE does not promote a R,articular school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only require that exhibiting artists must either not have had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue, or have received minimal recent public exposure.

CUE's Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading figures from the arts education, applied arts, art history, and literary communities, has the responsibility of selecting exhibition curators. The curators, in tum, nominate artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout the exhibition process, helping the artists catalogue their work for exhibition. Both the Advisory Council and the exhibition curators actively participate in the public lectures and educational programs.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Gregory Amenoff Thomas G. Devine Thomas K. Y. Hsu Brian D. Starer ADVISORY COUNCIL

Gregory Amenoff William Corbett Meg Cranston Roy D� Carava Vernon Fisher Malik Gaines Deboral1 Kass living Sandler GALLERY DIRECTOR

Jeremy Adams DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT

Elaine Bowen GALLERY COORDINATOR

Sandllini Poddar Part of this work was made poss ble through the generous support of Pro Helvetia -Arts Council of Switzerland, and the Lannan Foundation.

Pr nts by Aracely Cortes, Imagen Virtual, Mexico City.

All artwork © Julian Cardona Catalog designed by Elizabeth E,hs

GALLERY ASSISTANT

Beatrice Wolert-Weese

2 0 0 5/6

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