From April 06 to May 16, 2015 the works produced in the International Project CROSSOVER [KC – BsAs] were exhibited in the Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Washington State, USA.

Organized by Cara Jaye, one of the creators of the project, CROSSOVER [KC-Bs As] was in this oportunity part of a larger exhibition and event. It included the pieces of all the Crossovers sessions as well as artists Miguel Rivera, Alicia Candiani, Melanie Yazzie and Patricia Villalobos Echeverria’s residencies, lectures scheduled for April 7, 8, 9, 21 and May 5 and 7,  in addition to gallery talks with the artists explaining the project.

Created by Cara Jaye (Washington, USA) and Miguel Rivera (Guanajuato, Mexico) in 2004 as a spontaneous collaboration that has now expanded to include the taking and trading of artworks by more than 30 artists from over ten countries, Crossover/Cruce de Vías addresses issues of exchange, borders, authorship, travel and the interplay within collaboration. The diverse body of more than 150 works incorporate drawing, collage, photography, painting and printmaking techniques as artists use layers and multiple viewpoints to form an active and ongoing dialogue on crossing borders and nationalities, bridging differences and expressing commonalities while sending work across actual borders.

International Crossover exhibitions

2015 | Crossover / Crossroads, Western Gallery, Western Washington University. Bellingham, Washington, USA.
2013 | Crossover [KC-BsAs], Proyecto´ace. Buenos Aires, Argentina
2012 | Crossover KC, Kansas City Artists Coalition. Kansas City, Missouri, USA
2006 | Crossover / Cruce de Vias, Shift Gallery. Seattle, Washington, USA and Jesús Garcia Gallery, Guanajuato, Mexico

The work produced during Crossover [KC-Bs As] was exhibited in Fundación ‘ace during three months. 26 artists from different countries participated of this project which took place in ‘ace during the beginning of 2013.

On the exhibition’s opening, May 15th, Buenos Aires public enjoyed and shared an ‘aceNITE not only with many of the Crossover artists, but also with Miguel Rivera (initiator of the project) who came all the way from Kansas City in the USA to join us.

Essay on Crossover (by Daniela Ruiz Moreno)

To work in collaboration means to unite, merge, and contrast diverse ways of seeing and thinking. It implies openness to receive others expressive languages, allowing it to penetrate and challenge our own language.

In Theory of Modern Art, Paul Klee, reflects upon human’s creative strength and states “it is necessary to reveal this strength, its functions, in the same way it reveals in ourselves, this strength together with the matter, should embody, become shape, reality”. Is because of this that I believe that working in collaboration means to reveal and to force the emergence of the creative strength inside the others work. This is only achieved by activating one’s own strength.

Following this it is interesting to note the variety of “crossings” and overlaps, the different levels of permeability explored and revealed by each artist. In some cases each ones images suffered mutations, established dialogs in which each issuer maintains some distance, they relate but avoid infection (Viviana Sierra). Images crush or become flatten with the presence of the other, but at the same time a level of merging is achieved (Natalio Altube, Sol Massera, Paula Nahmod). In other case, both languages relate organically (Alejandro Scasso).

Artists appropriate the original for their own work (Alejandro Thornton), or use it as an impulse or stimulation to explore questionings already present in their search (Cristina Solía). Even chance was present in a piece in which a strong syncretism between Judaism, Muslim and Catholicism was achieved (Gabriela Zelentcher).  In other works, the link between the two expressions was documented in a video. This resource allowed registering the randomness and importance of the entailment as one expression was not perceptible without the other (María José Sánchez Chiappe).

The virus, fundamental concept in the previous editions of CROSSOVER was interpreted in multiple ways in this session. In one case, the work focused in rats, essential actors and victims of the experiments to resist and battle viruses (Sonia Sánchez Avelar). In other, the artist was interested in the reproductive capacity of the virus, finding in its embryonic state, formal similarities with other beings (Bárbara Vincenti). The duality life/death that the virus holds was explored (Maren Preston), also the social danger and horror that epidemics produce. Infection, destructive in the case of viruses was founded in other human expressions such as laughter, in this case as something positive and empowering. Infection could be related also with colonial processes, where not only physical destruction is implied but also cultural, social and religious (Jennifer Pickering).

Crossover [KC-Bs.As.] is a project in which each artist had the opportunity to explore in a creative environment. Individual expressions became challenged, stimulated and embraced. Each artist, free to invade and to be infected by others creations, achieved in this way new languages.