Julián Cardona

Born in 1960 in Zacatecas, Mexico, Julián Cardona was still an infant when his family migrated to the border city of Juárez. Cardona was raised at the border: it is where he attended school, received vocational training, and worked as a technician in the maquiladora industry. In 1991, he moved to Zacatecas to teach basic photography at the Centro Cultural de Zacatecas; two years later, he started his photojournalism career at El Fronterizo and El Diario de Juárez. In 1995, he organized the group show, "Nada que ver" (Nothing to See), a photography exhibition held in Juárez and reviewed by Harper’s Magazine (Dec.1996). Cardona’s work was featured in the 1998 Aperture publication, Juárez: The Laboratory of Our Future, written by Charles Bowden, and in "Camera of Dirt," Aperture no. 159.

His photographs have been included in exhibitions in Mexico, the United States, and Europe, and most recently in the Swiss-organized, internationally-touring group show titled "Borders and Beyond." Cardona is currently the editor of photography for Día Siete, and since 2000 lives in Mexico City.

Ricardo Duffy

Ricardo Duffy was born in 1951 and grew up in an area of Los Angeles called "Las Lomas." In 1977, he graduated from Cal State University, Fullerton with a B.A. in art, emphasis ceramics, and that same year opened a studio in Costa Mesa. Over the last decade Duffy has concentrated his artistic energies on the creation of two-dimensional works: serigraphs, monographs, and mixed-media paintings that are rife with pointed commentary about social irresponsibility and injustice. He has participated in many solo and group exhibitions throughout Los Angeles, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and Europe. His work was included in the exhibition "Made in California," organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000, and "Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California" organized by the University of California, Santa Barbara, 2001. Articles featuring his work have been published in Artweek, La Opinión, and the Los Angeles Times.

Duffy has also designed and completed several commissions for public art projects in Los Angeles; a recent example can be seen at the Ontario International Airport, near Riverside, CA. He currently lives and works in San Juan Capistrano, CA.

Josh Kun

Josh Kun, born in 1971, is a native of Los Angeles. He studied Literature at Duke University and received his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Recent writings have appeared in Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America (Duke University Press), James Baldwin Now (New York University Press), Theatre Journal, and in Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back (Routledge). Kun is a 2000-2002 Sundance Writers Fellow and writes a weekly arts column, "Frequencies," for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and The Boston Phoenix. Since fall 1999, he is a professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, and teaches courses about Los Angeles, the United States-Mexico border, popular music, and Twentieth-Century African-American and Latino/a literature.

Kun is completing his first book, Strangers Among Sounds: Music, Race, and American Culture (University of California Press), and works as a disc jockey for "La Leche," an international Latin music club, and as a video jockey for "Rokamole," a weekly Latin alternative music video and culture show on KJLA-LATV in Los Angeles.

Rubén Ortiz Torres

Born in Mexico City in 1964, Rubén Ortiz Torres lives and works in Los Angeles and Mexico City. In 1986, he completed his studies at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, U.N.A.M., in Mexico City; and in 1990, was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study at the California Institute of the Arts, where he received an MFA. Ortiz has participated in more than 100 group shows in the United States, Europe, Mexico, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and Mexico, including "Desmothernismo: Rubén Ortiz Torres, a ten year survey," organized in 1998 by the Huntington Beach Art Center in Huntington Beach, California.

Ortiz’s multimedia installations combine video, music, photography, painting, sculpture, and performance, and explore areas of cultural intersection and collision between Mexico and the United States. Since fall 2001, he is a professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.

Yvonne Venegas

Born in 1970 in Long Beach, CA and raised in Tijuana, Yvonne Venegas now lives and works in New York City. She has worked as a photographer for over ten years, freelancing in both Mexico City and New York, and has studied at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. Her photographs have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ZOOM Photo Magazine, Vibe, Details, Fronteras, and Spin. She has participated in group shows in San Diego, New York City, Tijuana, Mexico City, Madrid and Valencia, Spain, and had solo shows in Portugal and Mexico.

Venegas describes her series "The Most Beautiful Brides of Baja, California" as a "glimpse of what my life could have been like if I had done what was expected of me." Quite aptly, Venegas returns periodically to her hometown of Tijuana to pursue an ongoing project: documenting the women and families of a social milieu often captured by her father ~ a prominent local wedding photographer.

Sweeney Art Gallery
Watkins House
3701 Canyon Crest Drive
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521-0113

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 am to 4 pm

(New Area Code)
Phone: 951/827-3755
Fax: 951/827-3798
E-mail: krapp@pop.ucr.edu

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